MountainDolphin
My feedback
1 result found
-
357 votes
Thanks for your feedback. At this time, this doesn't fit on our roadmap, but we'll keep it in mind for future product planning.
MountainDolphin
supported this idea
·
An error occurred while saving the comment
Ditto for all preceeding comments, however, there _is_ a workaround, at least for Android.
I haven't upgraded Waze in well over a year, and I'd completely forgotten why... I encountered this problem a year ago -- I use the "Send ETA"/Share Drive feature extensively, including sharing my drive and/or ETA people who aren't in my Contacts at all, or who I have no personal phone# for. The beauty of the original Send ETA feature was that it would work via any method: Any IM program, Skype, SMS, e-mail, you name it. I would even use it to send my ETA to people who didn't have smartphones -- the SMS giving my ETA would still work fine.
I have no intention of releasing my entire 3500-person contact lists indiscriminately (or doing Waze's advertising for free by announcing to people I'm using Waze). Not to mention, this was an express violation of Waze's own Privacy Policy, according to which Waze should not be retrieving phone or contact info or even asking for it unless the Find Friends feature was expressly turned on (which I had never done).
At the time, July last year, the issue of requiring Contacts access to use the "Find Friends" feature or just send the ETA (via any 3d-party app) started with Waze 3.8.0 on Android (not sure about the iOS version #).
After several people experimented, myself included, it turned out that downgrading back to the previous Waze version, 3.7.9, worked fine and solved the issue.
I completely forgot about the whole thing until I had to factory-reset my phone yesterday for an unrelated reason, and the backuped-up Waze app crashed.
I downloaded the current version from the Play store, and lo-and-behold, despite the many complaints last year, the issue is still there (even worse, since it doesnn't allow logging on using my existing valid username/password credentials, and insisted on getting my phone# first, just to connect to Waze.
The issue & solution had been discussed in the Feedback thread for 3.8.0 in the Waze official user-support forums, at
https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=96662&start=390
While searching for the relevant posts today I was surprised to find Waze had been underhanded about this, and deleted posts in that thread related to this issue (including mine) as well as posts in another thread explaining how to roll back the version.
(How do I know this? Using "Search" in the Waze Forum finds these posts, but clicking on the results brings up unrelated posts... The search results must still be cached somewhere).
Anyway, the workaround (tested today and appears to work fine, disclaimer below):
-- Uninstall the current Waze version from the phone,
-- Install v3.7.8.0 from an APK file
The first time it runs Waze will ask for username/login credentials, but will not ask for a phone#, and the "Send ETA" feature is freely available without allowing access to Contacts.
The APK file can be downloaded from:
http://www.devfiles.co/download/b1BBK4aY/Waze_Social_3.7.8.0.apk
And installed it by clicking on the file (you'll get a similar dialog to the one seen on the Play Store when installing an app).
Before installing the APK, you will have to make sure the relevant phone setting allows installs from non-Google Play sources.
DISCLAIMER: While I'm reasonably sure this will work, I am not responsible for anything that happens if you do this, and I only tried it on my personal phone, a Samsung S3 (GT-I9300) running Android 4.2.2 . If you don't feel comfortable doing it, don't.
I don't know whether a similar solution is possible for iOS.
I use Waze extensively; I'm in Israel, where Waze is developed -- as of 2 years ago, >50% of the dirvers on the roads at any given time were using it -- and there is nothing that comes close in terms of the power of the crowdsourcing aspects (even if some other features are a bit behind the times).
That is why I'm taking the trouble to work out a solution and share it (in true crowdsourcing spirit (-: ) instead of using another satnav solution, but if Waze continues to abuse its users, it'll lose me.