Your Apps Are Watching You

My kids call me old-school, because I'm wary of these new-fangled smartphones. I don't text, take pictures, access the internet or anything with my old-style LG phone, I just use it as a phone. I'm paranoid, but maybe I'm safer than some of the people I see whose whole lives revolve around their cell phones.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...703574602.html


Quote:




Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name�even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.

These phones don't keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

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.

The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.




Kind of scary, I think. Same deal as using all those silly apps on Facebook; your info is given or sold to all kinds of people.|||Eventually they'll be suggesting clothes for you, restaurants that appeal to your tastes, exercise routines and better diets if they think you're unhealthy, and maybe even hinting and winking about girls or guys it thinks you should date.

Except it'll lack the coolness of a friend and have all the over-obsessiveness of a stalker. Couldn't someone eventually take these people/companies to the courts over cyber-stalking?|||Hey MV, don't be afraid to get yourself a phone with a camera in it. I don't use any apps or internet or tweeters or nothin' on my phone either... but I do enjoy having a nice camera with me all the time. It comes in handy and prevents me from having to carry around a seperate camera.

I just save them to the memory card in the phone, pop that out, pop it into my pc, and copy the pictures off.



Gmr Leon, it's happening sooner than you think:

http://www.necn.com/12/21/10/DirecTV..._business.html


Quote:




DirecTV will sell advertisers targeted spots on 25 top-rated cable channels so that, for example, a dog food advertiser can target spots to people marketing database providers know to dog owners, or Huggies and Pampers can advertise to DirecTV subscribers with diaper-aged babies and toddlers. At any given moment, different subscribers on the same street watching the same show might see different ads based on what marketers know about their lifestyles and shopping habits.|||Quote:








Hey MV, don't be afraid to get yourself a phone with a camera in it. I don't use any apps or internet or tweeters or nothin' on my phone either... but I do enjoy having a nice camera with me all the time. It comes in handy and prevents me from having to carry around a seperate camera.

I just save them to the memory card in the phone, pop that out, pop it into my pc, and copy the pictures off.




I've got a camera in mine, and have used it a couple of times just to make sure I know how to use it. Never know when I'll have to take a picture of a car accident or something.

Other than that, I've got a real DSLR camera that I use for: taking pictures.