I don’t hear so much about Admob, but if they’re doing the same thing, covertly sending data about my usage habits back to some mother ship, along with some method of tying it back to me or my device, then I’m not very fond of them, either.

Don’t even get me started on Google, Om! ;-) I think in the future people will regret just how much of their privacy they gave up to this company in the name of convenience and personalized/relevant targeted ads.

Your point about focusing my ire on the developers rather than the analytics is specious, and jumps to an inaccurate assumption. It assumes that I don’t hold developers who use these services in the same negative light. I do, if they don’t give me a way to opt out. Just for the sake of argument, with your logic, if I think abortion should be illegal, I should only be angry with the women getting abortions, not the doctors who perform them. If I think marijuana should be illegal, I should only be angry with the people who smoke it, not the people who grow and sell it. If I think guns should be illegal, I should only be upset with those who buy guns, not those who make them.

In all of those highly politically charged scenarios, if you’re opposed to the primary thesis, of course you should be opposed to both the supplier and user of the thing you disapprove of. It’s the same with these analytics companies.

My primary concern is that as a user, you generally don’t know that the data is even being collected, what data is actually being collected, how easily it is traced back to you as a unique entity, and most importantly, that there is usually NO way to opt out and no notification that it’s being done. This stuff should be opt-in…