Sorry about getting this one out late. Before the holidays one of my facebook friends shared this rather scary bit from the news. A number of my coworkers have purchased the latest generation of smart phones. I-Phones, Droids, and the like are essentially little portable computers that put the power of the Internet, things like GPS, as well as phone and text service in the palm of your hand. They are pretty amazing. The user can add applications (apps) for little or no cost greatly expanding the power and flexibility of these devices. However the Wall Street Journal reports, “An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.” Since then this misuse of personal day has passed into the courts. A number of lawsuits are pending.
These phones are equipped with a unique device identifier (UDID). Think of this as a “super cookie” that can not be erased or disguised. Every time you use the device, they are watching you, collecting data on your preferences, whether you like or not. Again the Wall Street Journal Reports, "The great thing about mobile is you can't clear a UDID like you can a cookie," says Meghan O'Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps. "That's how we track everything."
Apple and Google both let advertisers use the information collected from smart phone to target customers. While Apple claims that apps for their phones “cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used,” experiments performed by the Wall Street Journal indicate that this claim is not true. The companies like Motorola and Samsung that manufacture these devices view them as platforms. Since they neither create the apps nor load them onto the phone, the manufactures contend that they bear no responsibility for the misuse of personal information.
Companies that buy and sell this information, such as Mobclix, can even locate the home of an individual user. Although these companies contend they categorize users rather than maintaining individual records, the Wall Street Journal reports, “In roughly a quarter-second, Mobclix can place a user in one of 150 "segments" it offers to advertisers, from "green enthusiasts" to "soccer moms." For example, "die hard gamers" are 15-to-25-year-old males with more than 20 apps on their phones who use an app for more than 20 minutes at a time.” Fox News reports, “Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks.”
Technology is not standing still Apple has filed a patent application for a system that uses data collected from web history, web search patterns, downloads to a personal medial library and even correlates such data with the preferences and histories of friends on social networking sites. This is pretty scary stuff. It is bad enough that marketers are violating the personal privacy of their targets at every turn, however it is certain that once such technology is developed it will be used by governments to locate their “enemies” even if they are quiet, law abiding citizens.
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Guess it's inescapable. The older I get the behinder I am. Just like to buy books and use a land-line. But there won't be either in a few more years. Colonoscopy next week. Maybe they'll implant something.
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