Did Fitness Buddy just turn into ransomware?
According to Google, the definition of ransomware is “a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid”. So imagine my surprise yesterday when I realised I had just installed ransomware on my iPhone.
To provide some context, I have been using Fitness Buddy (developed by Azumio) to primarily log all of my weightlifting progress since October 9th 2012 (when we were back on Version 1.0).
As of September 13th 2015 I had used the free iOS app to log over 400 day’s worth of exercise, tracking over 4886 sets in the process. My goal has always been to develop strength, and the best way to track this is through hard numbers. This data is incredibly important to me as demonstrable evidence of the progress I have and continue to make in the gym.
If you’re wondering why I use that specific September 13th date as a point-of-reference, it’s because that was the last time I tried exporting all of my data to .csv using the app’s inbuilt functionality. If you want to know how horrific the exported data looked then see below for a sample:
So what’s the big issue you ask? Well with the update to version 5.4, you saw that Azumio decided to make their “BIGGEST update in the history of Fitness Buddy”. Aside from the shiny new features that include:
- A calorie tracker
- A heart rate monitor
- A sleep quality monitor
- A new social component
they also decided to make some major changes to the underlying features of the application. Since they decided to skimp on those descriptions in the App Store update log, let me give you a quick rundown:
Fitness Buddy now requests access to your location for ANY exercise that you decide to log, and god forbid you don’t allow it permission to do that. Expect your notification center to be bombarded with requests until you either block the app entirely or relent and give them permission to harvest unnecessary personal data.
Remember those custom workouts you had saved to make your life easier? Yeah, you don’t need those anymore. Anything you had previously saved has now been deleted.
My favourite update has to be this one. No longer can I see ANY of my fitness entries that date back to 2012. I now have to pay either a monthly or yearly subscription to unlock them. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?
It also looks like Azumio have removed the ability to export any data whatsoever from the application. All of my workouts are now forever locked away in the confines of this shitty company’s data warehouse.
Since I have no need for any of their new features, what exactly would I be paying $4.99 a month for? Something I could do with a pen and paper? I refuse to have my data held to ransom by a company who shows blatant disregard for their users. Thanks but no thanks.
Going back to the original definition of ransomware:
- Is Fitness Buddy “a type of malicious software”? — Yes, I fully believe that this software update has malicious intentions.
- Is Fitness Buddy “designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid”? — $4.99 per month to access data they were previously allowing users to “export” for free? I’d say so.
Shame on me for not constantly exporting and storing the data myself, but obviously I never predicted the miserable depths that these developers would steep to.
My first instinct was to leave a review on the App Store as a warning for other users who might be looking to update to the new version. Unbelievably I couldn’t do this.
Azumio has been drumming up support from their fake 5* accounts, but peppered in-between are fellow users like me who have had their exercise history held to ransom.
Honestly I’d love to hear some kind of official comment from Azumio to clarify what the fuck they think they are playing at. In the meantime it looks as though the following competitors are worth investigating:
- Fitbod — http://fitbod.me/
- FitNotes — https://twitter.com/fitnotesapp
- Jefit — https://www.jefit.com/elite/
- Strong — http://www.strongapp.me/
