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Re: McDonald's App

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On 15/12/2018 4:26 pm, Rich wrote:
> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
>> McDonald's in Austraila is ceasing the use of cardboard loyalty cards,
>> then give one in six coffees 'free', with this only being available
>> using their ap.
>>
>> So, I bit the bullet and installed it, particularly given that my very
>> old and slow smartphone died, and I had to buy a new one, which is
>> considerably faster (i.e. actually usable).
>>
>> The ap occupies 72MB of storage.
>>
>> 72MB! How in God's name can an ap for ordering burgers and coffee take
>> up 72MB?
> 
> 1MB is for handling the 'loyalty cards' portion of the app -- 71MB is
> used for all the user trackers and push advertising code bundled with
> the app.
> 

There could be some truth in this. I finally got around to doing a man 
in the middle attack on its traffic.

It makes connections to

ap.api.mcd.com
api.apptentive.com
graph.facebook.com
kvinit-prod.api.kochava.com
config2.mparticle.com
mobile-collector.newrelic.com
identity.mparticle.com
cdn.optimizely.com
control.kochava.com

Of these, only the first is peforming the burger ordering function, and 
if the others are blocked, the ap still works perfectly well (by which I 
mean, it works no worse than it does normally, which is to say slowly 
and unreliably).

One of the class files in the ap contains almost a megabyte of Java 
strings, which describe, in JSON, complete with spaces for indenting, 
the URLS for the various functions and for numerous different 
international markets. This class file might have been synthesised, but 
I suspect that somewhere there's a Java source file that contains it.

I had thought that the various images the AP uses would be downloaded, 
and cached, as required, but I see no evidence of that. This probably 
goes some way explaining the ap's huge size, if it contains all these 
imagines (though even then, that's enough for a hell of a lot of image 
files).

That doesn't stop responses to a single request to the Macca's server 
being many kilobytes in length.

I've given up using the thing for ordering, because it's so unreliable. 
Its function now is only to ensure I get my freebies and discounts when 
I order at the counter. The net result is that there's now slightly more 
cost impose on McDonald's for staff.

Sylvia.

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Thread

McDonald's App Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2018-12-15 11:46 +1100
  Re: McDonald's App Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2018-12-15 01:31 +0000
  Re: McDonald's App Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2018-12-15 05:26 +0000
    Re: McDonald's App Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2019-04-15 17:17 +1000
  Re: McDonald's App Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2018-12-15 17:04 +1100
    Re: McDonald's App Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2018-12-15 03:25 -0400
  Re: McDonald's App Batchman <batchman@dosville.foo> - 2018-12-16 21:06 +0000

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