IMPORTANT ONE :- KINDLY READ THIS AND DO SHARE THIS . What your Android apps know about you: Researchers reveal the software that can listen to your microphone, access your contacts and always knows exactly where you are. Data is used to effectively target ads to users by knowing their location Games aimed at children had access to location and microphone Fruit Ninja, Despicable Me & Talking Tom popular apps with poor privacy Android apps are spying on users far more than expected, a new study has found. It found one of the worst offenders was a game aimed at children. Called Happy Fish, developer HappyElements, programmed the game so that it can collect a precise location, has access to your photos and can read your text messages. It can even tell which Wi-Fi network youre using. Android users have taken to messageboards to complain about the problems. The hugely popular game Fruit Ninja asks users for permissions described as crazy by users. One reviewer wrote I will never install this until it is clear as to why the developer needs access to all your private content. The chart ranks the apps (top to bottom) that ask for the most permissions. AntiVirus Security, Viber and Facebook top the charts. However, more than half of the 25 apps have access to contacts, and about a third tap into text messages, call log and microphone. The key to the permissions, experts say, is ads. These advertisers are trying to get more targeted information about you, so they can get more targeted ads, PrivacyGrade.org founder and Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science Jason Hong said. These apps access information about a user that can be highly sensitive, such as location, contact lists and call logs, yet it often is difficult for the average user to understand how that information is being used or who it might be shared with, Most developers arent evil, but they often dont know what to do with respect to privacy and security, Hong added, explaining that some developers may simply collect data with their apps because they can, and nobody stops them. The site assigns letter grades to more than one million free Android apps, ranging from an A+ for the puzzle game Lazors to a D for the Despicable Me: Minion Rush game. PrivacyGrade.org keeps track of hundreds of apps. Todays smartphones have an incredible array of capabilities, it says. Smartphones have access to our communications (email, contacts list, and social networks), activities (location, call logs, photos, accelerometers), and more. However, some apps access this sensitive data in ways that people do not expect. These are not just hypothetical risks either: several app developers have already been fined by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive uses of peoples data. Last year the Federal Trade Commission offered guidelines to developers, but they are often ignored. In 2013, Path, the social networking site, was fined $800,000 for deceiving users by collecting phone numbers from its address book. In September 2014 , review site Yelp forked over $450,000 for collecting location data about its underage users. The FTC says: The complexity of the ecosystem raises 21st century concerns: When people use their mobile devices, they are sharing information about their daily lives with a multitude of players. How many companies are privy to this information? How often do they access such content and how do they use it or share it? What do consumers understand about who is getting their information and how they are using it?
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 14:45:54 +0000
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