Social apps “harvesting data” – what’s this all about?
Twitter has recently admitted to copying the entire address books from smartphones and storing the data on their servers, without customers’ knowledge.
Access to the address book is enabled when users click on the “Find Friends” feature on smartphones apps.
Twitter spokesman Carolyn Penner said it would now offer users the option to “upload your address book” or “import your contacts” to make it clearer.
She said: “We want to be clear and transparent in our communications with users. Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, we are updating the language associated with Find Friends – to be more explicit.”
Alongside Twitter being in the news recently, there has also been talk of Android apps handling personal data to advertisers.
On Sunday Channel 4 News uncovered how easy it is for apps on Android phones to share and access data. The Channel 4 News research was undertaken by UK security company MWR InfoSecurity.
“We found that a lot of the free applications in the top 50 apps list are using advertising inside the applications, and that the permission that you grant to these applications is also granted to the advertiser,” a representative of MWR InfoSecurity told Channel 4 News.
“If users knew about this, I think they would be concerned about it. But at the moment I don’t think they are aware of the situation and how widely their information can be used.”
These kinds of practices by giants such as Twitter and Google raises questions and concerns about the privacy implications posed by other websites and apps.
At Esendex we have taken the relevant steps to protect our customers’ privacy. We never disclose your details to any third party for marketing purposes. We also employ security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.
If you would like more information on data privacy please get in touch – info@esendex.co.uk
A while ago we talked about how instant messaging apps were slowly eating away at SMS revenues. Today we’ve got wind of a few figures that shows this is in fact the case, according to a report by Ovum, these new IP-based messaging services have cost telecom operators $8.7bn in lost SMS revenue in 2010, and a further $13.9bn in 2011.