I've never heard of them....and I'm far from a spring chicken. What guarantees can you give that they don't do something like that today -- other than anecdotal evidence as a complete outsider?
Regardless, my concern is still there and I will still refuse to use it. To each his own, I'm not trying to campaign against them, just sharing my opinion.
Just for what it's worth, and speaking as an Olark employee, we don't, and don't plan to. But I totally get your concerns, and healthy skepticism is valuable.
Thanks, and I truly mean no ill will. To play conspiracy theorist though, I doubt anyone -- save for a select few high-level execs -- would even have a clue if something shady like that was even happening. But that's just privacy paranoia talk...
Another point that I originally excluded, but which I think is relevant on a different front, is that y'all are limiting your customer base with your setup. I'm sure you're well aware, and perhaps it's something that you'd like to do eventually or perhaps you've investigated it and it's not economically viable, but there are likely many apps that could well use something like this, but can't.
For instance, the app that I work on for my day job is PCI & HIPAA compliant, and we've had to roll our own solutions for many features due to the fact that our app is intranet-hosted, aka. 100% insulated from the internet. Even if our app was internet-facing, trusting an outside vendor with sensitive data is non-starter, unless they are also PCI/HIPAA complaint, as is any solution that has the capacity for such data to leave our app.
But again, thanks for the reply and I wish you the best of luck!
Regardless, my concern is still there and I will still refuse to use it. To each his own, I'm not trying to campaign against them, just sharing my opinion.