User IDs vs checkpoint links

[JohnCLo]

Hey @tyleryasaka interesting project! Its aligned with what we're doing at github.com/zerobase-io/

One question I have is why there is no persistent user ID, from what I understand an array of checkpoints is being saved to localStorage and passed onto each check-in. Are there advantages to passing an array of formerly hosted checkpoints and scanned checkpoints to the check-in schema, as opposed to one user ID that is stored in localStorage? Interested to hear your thoughts on this! Thank you

[tyleryasaka]

Thank you for your interest @JohnCLo ! There is no concept of a "user" in our system, by design - we are NOT tracking people. Hence there is no user id.

[tyleryasaka]

Also, just for the record: It hasn't escaped my notice that querying specific checkpoints from the server would allow the server to associate these checkpoints with an IP address. In the next iteration of the app, an entire public database of exposed checkpoints (over the last X days) would be downloaded by all users to prevent the server from making this association. If this database became large, it could be split randomly into chunks based on the first 1-2 characters in the checkpoint id, and then only the relevant chunks would need to be downloaded by users.

The idea is that nobody, including the server, should be able to associate any checkpoints with a specific user.