Otherwise?
Now I am really curious - exactly what compensation are you receiving, and in what amounts?
That is the standard boilerplate that the Apple moderators require if you post your own link, as dictated in the Apple Support Communities Use Agreement - Apple Community. I assume the “otherwise” refers to something like social media reputation. I don’t have much of that though. I stick to more traditional means of compensation. EtreCheck is free. But it turns out that lots of people run it without any intention of posting a report here in Apple Support Communities. I now have an optional in-app purchase available for people to make the report easier to read and provides a few other tricks. But for basic, no-charge usage, EtreCheck will generate a text report that other people here can read. It will also highlight any major or minor problems it finds. (There is a bit of a story behind that. Old versions of EtreCheck were purely text based and uses a colours for highlighting. But people read way too much into those colours so I changed it to list major and minor problems in literal black and white. Also, the latest iteration of the forum software would have broken those colours anyway.) Finally, the free version of EtreCheck will list adware, malware, or any other security issues it finds and help the user correct them. I don’t really market it as an “antivirus app” due to another long story. But it is quite good at finding zero-day malware that nothing else can find.
It appears this flies in the face of the EtreCheck privacy policy, which states in part :
Except as set out in this Privacy Policy, we will not disclose, sell, distribute, rent or lease your Personal Information to third parties unless we have your permission or to complete a transaction. We do not share your identifiable Personal Information with third parties for their direct marketing use without your express consent.
So if you are not selling, renting or leasing information, how are you receiving non-financial compensation, and from whom are you receiving it?
I think I mostly covered that above. I don’t peddle in personal information. EtreCheck is very careful about privacy. Reports are designed to be anonymous. And I have very few customers, relatively speaking. I don’t have enough information to sell even if I wanted to. I’m an old school software developer. The app is free. If you like it, you can pay a little bit of money and I’ll give you some extra features.
Why are you allowed to post spam on these forums when nobody else is?
Technically it is not spam. I only post a link to EtreCheck if I think it will help. It is pretty rare that I do that. I think you can confirm that with this link. Technically, I didn’t even post a link here because I screwed up my boilerplate due to the new forum software. You always have to press “enter” to make a link live or use the link control.
Anyone is free to post a similar link to their own software or web site under the same terms. Apple keeps a close eye on those posts and will delete them if they are truly spam or will add a disclaimer and send a nasty-gram to the poster. I’ve received a few nasty-grams over the years, but never for an EtreCheck link. 😉
exactly what are your financial entanglements - if any - with Apple?
I’m a member of the Apple Developer Program, which I pay for. EtreCheck is available in the Mac App Store. Anyone who purchases the “Power User” package in EtreCheck via the Mac App Store actually makes the purchase from Apple, who takes a 30% cut and sends me the rest. Apple provides really good service though. Some developers complain about the 30% but I find it very well-worth the money.
to whom are you selling the data collected from EtreCheck?
As I said above, I sell software, not data. Some people find the software valuable, which I found fairly surprising. I don’t expect that anyone would find the data valuable. And even if someone did want the data, EtreCheck reports are always anonymous. If someone did want the data, it would only be aggregate data about installed software, performance data, system configurations, etc. - never anything personally identifiable.
