The Wall Street Journal posted the interesting article “Your Apps Are Watching You” that led many mobile users questioning the privacy and security of today’s modern devices.
Apparently, a recent Wall Street Journal Investigation found out that the apps dwelling in the iPhone and Android devices are actually breaching the privacy of smartphone users by sending out critical information such contact numbers, passwords, location, and user ID to trackers and third party scanners. WSJ examined a total of 101 extremely popular apps and found out that 56 of them actually transmitted user data to other companies without the user’s consent. Does that sound good you? This only reveals the offending desire of companies to track down your personal data in high hopes to flesh out some money sinkholes out from you. The findings also listed the iPhone’s apps to be the most prone to transmit unwanted user data to online hogs. And guess what, the most prudent among all is TextPlus version 4 – a famous app that offers text messaging service. Would you believe that it sent out phone’s unique ID number to eight ad companies and zip code together with the user’s age and gender? Wow! Apple did made a comment about the study saying, "We have created strong privacy protections for our customers, especially regarding location-based data. Privacy and trust are vitally important." Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association affirmed with the following statement, "In the world of mobile, there is no anonymity. A cellphone is always with us. It's always on.” So the next time you will use that app again, consider taking some extra measures in utilizing them.
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