How Does On My Way App Make Money

Tech

Posted on Nov 7, 2019 Updated on Aug 12, 2020, four:25 pm CDT

Since the early on 2000s, distracted driving has been the topic of several PSAs and dramatized commercials for prophylactic initiatives. A new app called OnMyWay is taking things to a new level by offering a major incentive for drivers to stay safe.

OnMyWay literally pays you to put your phone downwardly while driving; it rewards users for leaving their phones locked while driving. The app pays you v cents per mile, with an additional two cents for every person you lot refer to the app. Sounds like a sure matter; why not make some money for non-distracted driving? But there are some strings attached. Here's everything y'all demand to know nearly the OnMyWay app.

How do apps like OnMyWay work?

There are other apps like OnMyWay, like Sweatcoin or Lifecoin, that rail activity and reward users with pay-outs. These apps part past tracking users' locations and storing data nearly where they went, how long they stayed stationary, and other such information. Usage information is also collected. Co-ordinate to the OnMyWay app site, the app automatically detects when a driver goes faster than 10 miles an hour.

This ways that the app is tracking users' locations in the background when it is not open and in use. It keeps tabs on where yous are, how fast y'all're going, and when you start driving.

OnMyWay records when your telephone is locked and unlocked, which is how yous get "paid." However, it too records users' street addresses, email addresses, dates of nascence, and images of their drivers' licenses. The app doesn't sell the data, but OneZero quoted co-founder Chloe Palmer as saying that advertisers go to peek at it if they purchase space to place a "deal" (effectively, an add), in the rewards section of the app.

On My Manner app: Information-collecting and advertising

OnMyWay drivers are rewarded with five cents per mile for non touching their phones. But ane dollar earned in the app does not equal a 1-dollar payout. For every "dollar" of OnMyWay Cash earned, users tin can have home 10 cents, effectively getting rewarded for two miles out of every twenty they drive.

This greenbacks isn't deposited into your bank business relationship; instead, users redeem what they earn in the "deals" bachelor in the app, which are substantially coupon codes purchased by advertisers. According to reports, the app has several low-tier deals which range from $10 to $100. However, deals tin can sell out, and users need to wait for them to exist available again… and then they might sell out once again in a matter of hours.

Higher-tier rewards necessitate up of twenty referrals and driving tens of thousands of miles. Co-ordinate to the OneZero report, in guild to redeem a $1,000 deal, users would need to drive 100,000 miles and refer 50 people.

What does this all add together upward to?

Apps like OnMyWay have been around for years. Predecessors such as Pocket Points and the same Sweatcoin and Lifecoin brand money by potentially offering upwards user data to advertisers and using ads to fund their apps. Identifying information similar names, emails, addresses, contour photos, and even app usage is collected. Pocket Points, which targets students and rewards them for not being on their phone in form, outlines in its privacy policy that any information collected on users is kept indefinitely.

Most of the apps listed here follow this model, collecting identifying information on their users and giving it to advertisers in order to fund their app, except for Sweatcoin. Because it is based in the U.K., Sweatcoin is subject to information collection rules outlined by the European Unions Full general Information Protection Regulation. Data collected by the app is given with straight consent from users.

So what does all this mean? Apps like OnMyWay for the most role, are giving advertisers access to your personal information in social club to annunciate meliorate to their user base of operations. Of course, whether you want to requite abroad your data for pennies on the dollar is up to y'all.

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*Start Published: Nov 7, 2019, 2:sixteen pm CST

Brooke Sjoberg

Brooke Sjoberg is a freelance writer for the Daily Dot. She graduated with her Bachelors in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020.