Tapatalk Sold and being dropped

**Diamondback** · 09-15-23, 04:34

Originally Posted by pinzgauer

Welp, now I'm concerned the new mystery owner of m4c may be verticalscope.

Hopefully that is not the case as VS has ruined a bunch of really good forums (pirate4x4) and has a pretty bad CS track record. (Many forums become subscription, etc)

Also, it's been reported that VS is owned by the Toronto Star, which is totally anti-firearm.

Please tell me m4c is not headed down that path.!

THAT would be a strong justification for all the hush-hush about it...

**SteyrAUG** · 09-15-23, 05:09

Originally Posted by markm

No shit! Just accept the terms of use and click allow total access to yer dumb fone!!! Shit. I feel like I'm the only guy who immediately starts disabling everything I can on my phone... not adding shit to it.

I do it to. If it's not essential I turn it OFF.

Also rarely go online with my phone, I make calls and I send texts. My computer is on my desk not in my pocket.

**Disciple** · 09-15-23, 12:07

Originally Posted by pinzgauer

Really don't know where you're getting that idea from.

Tapatalk only asks for permissions related to its use. I just took a look.

Any Android in the last 10 years requires you to approve all permissions and allows you to individually disable.

My phone is old but not quite that old, and there are many "permissions" that I have no control over; only the basics like Location, Microphone, Storage, etc. are switchable.

Again I don't use this app and I am not going to spend a day researching it but "Tapatalk privacy" or similar search shows there are plenty of people who are concerned. Just one:

https://www.500eboard.co/forums/thre...il-2019.13045/

All,

I have heard increasing reports over the past couple of years about issues with Tapatalk -- particularly in terms of honoring and respecting user privacy, and mis-using customer data. Also unfriendly tactics like using their app to track users and actually download and make copies of subscribing forums on their own servers. They also default to uploading images directly from your phone/mobile device to their servers for posting onto this site, and by doing that they retain rights to those images. Effectively, over the past few years, Tapatalk has been gradually inserting itself more and more in the middle between their app users and the forums they are members of. The goal of all this is to get more and more customer data, and monetize it for themselves - and their own profits.

There have also been numerous, and several significant security breaches of Tapatalk code. In a number of instances, Tapatalk has not bothered to inform their users -- let alone forum owners -- about the breached code and security issues introduced. This has placed forums using their code in jeopardy of hackers, spammers, and false accounts. All of this is very documented. They have even changed code (to patch security issues) and not even changed the version of the new/patched code, meaning that forum owners or users who had downloaded older, insecure versions of their software had no idea that a newer version existed and that they should download it to close the security loop-holes.

NUMEROUS forums around the world have shut down their Tapatalk interfaces and have unsubscribed themselves from Tapatalk's network of forums. Many of them have used their conversions from older, less browser- and mobile-device friendly software like vBulletin, phpBB, Simple Machines Forum, ipBB, and others, to XenForo. XenForo is expressly designed for mobile devices, and displays very well on a wide variety of devices, form factors, and browsers.

After many weeks and months of research, and some middling and less-than-satisfactory experiences over the past year of my own with Tapatalk, I have decided to remove Tapatalk from its interface with this forum. After this point, forum members will need to use regular mobile or desktop or tablet browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) with the regular web version of this forum.

**HKGuns** · 09-15-23, 12:21

Cyber Security was my last responsibility until I recently retired, luckily fairly young. Very senior position at a very large, well known, company that shall remain nameless.

I lock down everything on my IOS phone to the extent it allows. Especially location and access to any data on the phone.

I used Tapatalk quite often for the convenience of not being tied to my desktop Computer. I don't allow access to all my photo's etc.......If I want to upload a picture, I select it manually.

However, being security conscious, after some of the posts here, decided to delete tapatalk and do things the harder way.

As far as who bought the forum, I'll try to worry more about things I can control.

**georgeib** · 09-15-23, 13:04

Only permissions granted to Tapatalk on my phone is Notifications.

**.45fan** · 09-15-23, 13:38

The main thing I don't like about Tapatalk is that, "user signature lines" are not blockable.

I don't give a eff that they are posting from your iPhone on Tapatalk, in every effing post they make.
One guy has some religious nonsense in another language, etc, etc, etc.

Regular forum signature lines are blockable, which is good. I don't understand why folks think their cute sig line needs to be in thousands of posts.

**pinzgauer** · 09-15-23, 18:17

Originally Posted by Disciple

Again I don't use this app and I am not going to spend a day researching it but "Tapatalk privacy" or similar search shows there are plenty of people who are concerned. Just one:

https://www.500eboard.co/forums/thre...il-2019.13045/

That guy told me everything I needed to know when he recommended Fora. Which, by the way, has exactly the same kind of complaints and privacy concerns as he outlined. I was reading about privacy concerns with Fora and VS last night. Actually read the VS privacy agreements, which are almost identical to Tapatalk.

Plus 90% or more of what he was complaining about only applies if you use their unified login.

They're just a lot of noise in this area complicated by large financial incentive to move everyone to four off due to the land grab of forums by the Toronto Star.

Just for reference, tap a talk has a 10 million downloads and is used routinely on 200K forms. (Or was anyway before all the forums were privatized by the Canuks)

**pinzgauer** · 09-15-23, 20:00

This potential vertical scope thing is disinheartening... They are offering big money in the terms of some cash plus mostly vertical scope stock to buy out forums. Most of which have changed character and dropped membership significantly after the fact.

You should read their terms of service, folks worried about tapatalk should really take pause:

The terms of service are the same at every VS owned forum:
https://www.toyotanation.com/help/terms/

Nice little tidbits like:

Code:

You agree to grant to ToyotaNation.com, VerticalScope and its subsidiaries, a non exclusive, royalty free, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to reproduce, distribute, transmit, sublicense, create derivative works of, publicly display, publish and perform any materials and other information you submit to any public areas, chat rooms, bulletin boards, newsgroups or forums of ToyotaNation.com or which you provide by email or any other means to ToyotaNation.com and in any media now known or hereafter developed.

And:

Code:

Material from this Web Site or from any other web site owned, operated, licensed or controlled by VerticalScope may not be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way.

And:

Code:

Unless otherwise specified, the materials contained on the Web Site are presented solely for the purpose of providing information to persons primarily located in Ontario, Canada. This site is controlled and operated by VerticalScope from its offices in Toronto, Ontario, Canada....snip

This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada and users of the Web Site irrevocably attorn to the jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of Ontario.

If that's not enough, you should read through their privacy policy where they talk about exactly how they will use web cookies, trackers, and other technology to assign a unique identifier to you and capture your exact operating system, browser, geolocation, what website you visited prior, etc.

And then provide that to their third party partners.

Don't trust me, read it yourself. The part about tracking is in the "how we will use the information section":
https://www.toyotanation.com/help/privacy/

I'm really hoping M4C is not headed this way, but if it is I guess it's been a good run.