As reported in The Sunday Times this weekend, Social media companies are using free smartphone apps that allow companies to spy on users’ text messages, intercept phone calls and track their location. Unknowingly for many consumers, the terms and conditions associated with such apps give developers the right to access private information held in your device.
The Facebook app for Google’s Android smartphones have been downloaded more than 100million times, yet very few of its users are thought to be aware that they had agreed to give Facebook the right ‘to read SMS messages stored on your device or SIM card’.
Facebook have rebuked these claims, stating that the request for permission to read text messages was to allow the app to read and write data between itself and the phone’s SMS feature, rather than for the company to trawl individuals’ messages.
Why then have Facebook made the decision to go to such lengths to collect data from a consumers’ phone only to not then use it? There appears to be a mentality amongst app developers that just because they have the ability to access this data then they should, whether they have the intention to manipulate it or not.
Other social media giants, such as Flickr and Yahoo!, are also alleged to have read texts via their apps, whilst smaller companies have even remotely taken images from users’ handset cameras and dial their phone and intercept calls without them knowing. The information gathered is often sold on to advertisers and market research companies.
The total lack of any effective regulation in this area is allowing our personal information to be harvested without our knowledge, or informed consent. There is no reason a simple sports game needs to be able to intercept our calls, or for Facebook to read our text messages. It is being done to maximise profits with a total disregard for privacy.
With Google’s new privacy policy just days away, the fact so many people are granting hugely intrusive access to their phones begs the question whether people really understand what they are signing away.
— UPDATE —
Following the growing concerns of consumers that their texts, calls and location were being manipulated by free apps, several European mobile phone companies have signed up to new privacy guidelines published by the GSMA. The body, which represents mobile operators, has stated that “recent headlines demonstrate the continuing need for ensuring policy” and commented that their guidelines would encourage the development of apps that respect “privacy by design”
However, at present the guidelines only apply to apps owned by individual mobile operators and not independent developers. GSMA have commented that they hope private developers would also apply the new principles and called for “The Big Three- Google, Apple and Microsoft to also develop sufficient guidelines.”
The apps market is not only the responsibility of mobile phone operators; developers, software operators and distributors also have their role to play in developing a universal mentality of “privacy by design”
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Channel 4 news has done some research into Android phones:
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Alexander Turner
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Bill
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Ben
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Koschenator