I am using Belong’s mobile service because of their carbon neutral service. I am trying to do the right thing in today’s world. However, I think that Belong is not necessarily doing the right thing.
When I switched to Belong, I installed their Android app to help with the migration of my old phone number. I think you could do it online as well, using a browser only. But the instructions mention only the app, so that is what I did.
I also signed up for the DuckDuckGo tracker app (beta). This app sets up a VPN service on “localhost” to re-route all of its traffic through its app. While doing this, it detects trackers that are used on apps. It is understandable that lots of free apps provide trackers, such as for using advertisement services. However, I do not understand why Belong app is using so many trackers? I am paying 25 dollars a month for this service and the app is very simple. It does not provide very sophisticated services but only shows my current data bank and profile information. The same thing I could see online after login in with my browser.
DuckDuckGo tells me that upon starting the app, it blocked 17 tracking attempts from 5 companies. These companies are Google, Facebook, Adobe, New Relic and Optimizely. These companies are known to collect all sorts of data, such as battery charge, location, app name, device brand, OS information, postal code, unique identifier…
I am totally unhappy about this and will also leave a similar reviews on Google and other platforms.
