Exist

Thoughts on the Moves Terms of Service update

As you probably know, the mobile activity-tracking app Moves was recently acquired by Facebook. Along with this acquisition came an updated Terms of Service. This isn't especially unusual, but certain changes in this case have sent some users in search of alternatives.

As Josh and I discussed the situation, we realised this is a good opportunity to briefly talk about the risks of using free services and sharing your personal data with any service.

What changed?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the latest version of Moves's Terms of Service prior to the acquisition stated that personal information would not be shared, even if the company was acquired. It also said that the acquisition would not change the Terms of Service, but that's clearly not the case.

As it stands now, Moves data will be shared with Facebook. The data won't be "co-mingled", which means your Facebook account isn't going to include any of your Moves data. According to Facebook, the sharing of data is purely so that Facebook employees can work on Moves. Still, many users are giving up on Moves, in order to keep their data out of Facebook's hands.

Some things to consider

This situation has reinforced a couple of things for us about how we run Exist.

Firstly, Exist is a subscription-based, paid-only service. We have no free account options. The reason for this is really simple: we're not funded, so Exist needs to pay for itself. Each user who signs up for an account is paying for the time and resources we put into creating and providing Exist for them. There are also some huge benefits that come from running a paid-only service, which played a big part in helping us decide to do so. Most importantly (and this is the second thing that was reinforced for us by the hullabaloo over Moves's acquisition): we don't need to sell our users' personal information or use it to show them ads to keep our business running. Our customers are our users; not advertisers, affiliate partners or marketers. This gives us the freedom to prioritise work that's in the best interests of our users.

You can see how we treat user data in our privacy policy.

When you use a service that's free, you're always taking the risk that you (i.e. your attention) and/or your data will be shared with advertisers or other third parties in order for the service to make a profit. You also take the risk of trusting that the service won't be acquired or otherwise affected in a way that changes how you interact with it and how safe your data is.

Of course, using a service that you pay for isn't risk-free, but as a general rule I'd say the risks are probably lower—especially concerning your data privacy.

The future of Moves

For now, we don't have any reason to stop supporting the Moves app in Exist. Until it stops making sense for us to do so, Moves integration will be available for Exist users. We're working on more service integrations and hope to support alternative apps to Moves in the future, for users who like to track their activity with an app rather than a physical device. Of course, if you have an iPhone 5s, you can already use Fitbit's MobileTrack option to track your steps with just your phone.

If you have a particular app in mind that you'd like us to support, let us know.