Wall Street Journal says apps may violate privacy, fingers MySpace and Pandora

[zerocool84]

You might have heard how careless some third-party apps can be with your personal data, but it may not yet have hit home -- offenders can include must-have programs like MySpace and Pandora, too. The Wall Street Journal tested 101 popular apps for iPhone and Android and discovered that over half transmitted unique device identifiers (UDID) to a flock of advertisers without so much as a prompt, and that some (including Pandora) even transmitted a user's age, gender and location to better target their marks. Now, before you boycott your favorite music apps, you might want to hear the other side of the story, which is that all this data is typically processed in batches and anonymized so that advertisers can't necessarily separate you from the crowd. However, the worry is that there may be little stopping nefarious individuals from creating a database that links your UDID to all this other data you send out. It's a juicy proposition for targeted advertising, sure, but also potentially real-world crime, so we doubt this will be the last we hear of UDID privacy scares.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/18/wall-street-journal-says-apps-may-violate-privacy-fingers-myspa/

 

[olds]

I ignore ads any way and never use my real data.

 

[Bateluer]

And what about Latitude, Places, Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter? Far too many users these days have absolutely no reservations regarding their own privacy. Kinda reminds me of a Brave New World.

 

[Brian Stirling]

What I'd like to see is the hacker community step up and list any and all apps that send your data. The phone makers and carriers won't like to be outed any more than the apps makers but someone has got to quantify how badly we are being spied on. This is NOT tinfoil hat stuff as they ARE spying on us.

It would be nice if there were greater regulation here but the government is just as interested in getting access to this data as any marketing company is and will and have refrained from proper safeguarding of the people.


Brian

 

[zerocool84]

What I'd like to see is the hacker community step up and list any and all apps that send your data. The phone makers and carriers won't like to be outed any more than the apps makers but someone has got to quantify how badly we are being spied on. This is NOT tinfoil hat stuff as they ARE spying on us.

It would be nice if there were greater regulation here but the government is just as interested in getting access to this data as any marketing company is and will and have refrained from proper safeguarding of the people.


Brian

With Android, they already list what the app has access to and if you willingly download it then you are saying it's ok for the apps to do that.

 

[akugami]

I'd like all mobile OS's to have a settings page with global as well as individual preferences that can turn on off individual info settings. For instance I can have a general settings that gives no access to personal info except for white listed apps. I can leave GPS info on as a general rule for all apps but also have a blacklist of apps that are restricted.

 

[Bateluer]

With Android, they already list what the app has access to and if you willingly download it then you are saying it's ok for the apps to do that.

This is true, but an app that requires full network access for a legitimate reason can use that same access to send data about your browsing habits back. Plenty of real reasons why apps need the permissions they do, but its easy to abuse them.

Pandora should really only have network access, and yet, for some reason it wants full access to my Personal Information and Contact. A previous version of it wanted GPS/Network location too.

 

[olds]

I see a day come in when the police track down a criminal because the gps is running in 1 of his apps.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I see a day come in when the police track down a criminal because the gps is running in 1 of his apps.

I bet this has already happened!


Brian