Although I am opposed to the loss of several layers or regulation and restriction on the governments use of my information and preferences, the last couple of years, we have voluntarily been handing over this information to third party advertisers, application developers, and other businesses. The new gorilla in the room could be... apps.
A recent investigative article from the Wall Street Journal shows that smartphones and their popular applications are sharing your personal information such as phone numbers, current location, the owner's real name and other unique identification information widely and regularly. A link to the original article can be found HERE.
The WSJ goes on to illustrate that several of the most popular applications like Pandora Radio sends your information to up to eight trackers. Although the fact that these applications send data to application developers, advertisers, and other companies is outlined in many of the application license agreements that you must accept to use them, end users rarely if ever take the time to read them. Many software and hardware products come with lengthy end user license agreements (EULA) they are often peppered with legalese that most folks, myself included have difficulty deciphering.
I personally am ok with most of my applications sharing the data that they have. Some applications actually share your personal contacts with third party services. This bothers me somewhat. When I learn that an application takes a little too much liberty with the information it gathers, I remove the application and cease using it. Many of these applications are free. I can understand how free applications need to be subsidized with in application ads, or sharing some information to offset development costs and the costs that would be paid for if users were to outright purchase the apps, but many paid apps share the same information as well.
As an example, the WSJ uncovered that the most popular smartphone game Angry Birds from Rovio Mobile, Ltd. transmits your contacts, location including city and gps information, phone id, and your username and password to third parties. The developer claims that it transmits this data to a game platform and analytics service to better understand what its users want. My question is, how secure are third parties when they handle this data.
Although we are often quick to cry fowl when the government accesses and transmits our private information, we seem to look the other way and be unconcerned when out must-have apps and games do the same thing. As a society, I think we need to be more diligent in controlling all of our information. I see this situation getting worse, not better. Consumers really need to be educated and take action.
What are your thoughts on the way application and hardware developers are handling your information. Although we have to opt-in to use these games, so few of us take the time to understand what is being done with this information.
