No. We don’t track who you are — we don’t have your name, email address, or any other information that identifies who you are.
We do create a random number (a UUID when you first run the app. If you want to clear that identifier, you should uninstall & reinstall the app; that will reset that value.
No. We don’t track/log or do anything with the content you have in your Instapaper account.
We collect the following information:
| What we collect | Why we collect it |
|---|---|
| How long you spend in the app, how often you launch it, what type of device you use, & what version of the app it is |
We collect the duration of time you spend in the app to help us understand focus our time on the right areas. If you spend a few minutes, often, we'll focus on making sure you get right into the app. If, on the other hand, you spend a long time in the app, we'll focus on making sure your experiences in the app are even better. The app version is important to allow us to know what version an error or crash occurs on, as well understand how often people are updating the app. The type of device lets us focus our energy on the types of devices people are actually using the app on. If everyone is on a PC in tablet mode -- we should make sure thats the best experience! |
| How many articles you have in your collection | Knowing how many articles you have lets us make sure we're developing the right UI to show all those items in the best was possible. This means ensuring it's fast (more items, means a different approach to making it fast) & readable (fewer items? Different layout). |
| How many folders you have in your collection | We don't think people have that many folders, but more than a couple. So, we've got them hidden away in the left hand menu. If we see people have fewer, we might choose to change how we present that information. |
| How many articles are added or removed, and how long it takes when you sync | We want to make sure that how often you sync, how much we sync is determined by this. If it's lots, and slow, maybe we need background sync. If it's not, maybe we should sync more often. |
| How long you spend reading an article | This goes hand in hand with how long you spend in the app. If you're spending most of your time reading, that means we need to focus on that part of the app, verus managing your saved articles. |
| How much progress (as a percentage) you make reading an article | We want to know how much people read of the document during each session of reading. Want to know if people are actually reading all of their article in one session, or coming back to articles over time. |
| When you open to the display preferences & what display preferences you select |
We've picked some great defaults, but if people are switching them all the time or gravitating towards specific settings, we can learn & change the defaults. Knowing what customers are setting & how often they change them helps us make those decisions. The specific things we track are:
|
| When you go to full screen, and why (user interaction, clicking in a youtube video's full screen button) | Are people making use of full screen mode? Are they using it to read, or watch a video? |
| What you do with your article plus which part of the app |
We look at:
|
| If you shared to the app successfully or error, and how long it took for Instapaper to save that article | We want to track our success rates, and make sure you're having a good experiance when sharing articles from Edge or other Windows apps. Part of that is checking how long it takes. |
| What windows platform (PC, Phone, etc) the app runs on, if you read an article in tablet mode. | Making sure we focus on building the right experiences for the right platforms. |
| How long it takes to download the article body (but not the images) | Help diagnose any issues with instapaper's syncing API -- e.g. is it us, or them? |
| Which commands you use in which part of the app, and if you use a keyboard when you use them | Understand which areas of functionality are being used, and how much keyboard shortcut usage they have. This will help us remove unused parts of the app, and understand how much effort should be spent on keyboard shortcuts. |
Yes. You can disable it in the settings page, in the “Share your usage of the app with us” section. Just set this to “Don’t share usage of the app with the developer”
It is important to note, that this is separate from any telemetry or other usage information that Instapaper themselves might be collecting on the articles you save. We don’t have any control or insight into that. Please consult their privacy page for their privacy policy.
We are using Mixpanel to store the data. We use an open source library called MixpanelClient to send the information.