{"id":2517,"date":"2012-09-03T11:26:02","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T18:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2012-09-03T11:26:02","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T18:26:02","slug":"privacy-no-longer-in-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/privacy-no-longer-in-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy: No Longer in Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It seems like people are no longer in control of their own privacy.”<\/p>\n

No. Kidding. \ud83d\ude44<\/p>\n

Mr. Zhang sounds shocked. Please. Of course people have lost control of their privacy.<\/p>\n

And most don’t care.<\/strong> \ud83d\ude2f<\/p>\n

Besides, haven’t we known for years that “Google is your friend”? <\/p>\n

Here. Read the story behind the above “money quote”:<\/p>\n

Some smartphone apps collect and transmit sensitive information stored on a phone, including location, contacts, and Web browsing histories, even when the apps are not being used by the phone\u2019s owner, according to two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

“It seems like people are no longer in control of their own privacy,” said Frances Zhang, a master\u2019s degree student in computer science at MIT.<\/p>\n

Zhang and fellow researcher Fuming Shih, a computer science doctoral candidate, found that some popular apps for phones running Google Inc.\u2019s Android operating system are continually collecting information without informing the phone\u2019s owner.<\/p>\n

The popular game Angry Birds uses the phone\u2019s GPS and Wi-Fi wireless networking features to track the owner\u2019s location, even when he\u2019s not playing the game, for example. Another game, Bowman, collects information from the phone\u2019s Internet browser, including what websites the owner has been visiting. And WhatsApp, a popular text-messaging program, scans the user\u2019s address book when it is seemingly idle.<\/p>\n

What is not known is whether apps that run on Apple Inc.\u2019s iPhone and iPad tablet computer collect information in similar ways.”<\/p>\n

Smartphone apps track users even when shut down<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Almost four years ago, I wrote about Cell Phone Security<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you have a smart phone, does it run on the (Google-is-your-friend<\/a>) Android OS?<\/p>\n

And do you care if your smarty-pants cellphone might be a Trojan horse<\/a> in your pocket?<\/p>\n

If you have a smart phone and if you care about your own privacy, what are you actively doing to guard your personal privacy<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Oh…and if your stance on privacy is, “I have nothing to hide<\/a>,” how far are you prepared to take that?<\/p>\n

PS: I’m not on some sort of anti-Google crusade, OK? \":mrgreen:\" I use several Google services…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It seems like people are no longer in control of their own privacy.” No. Kidding. \ud83d\ude44 Mr. Zhang sounds shocked. Please. Of course people have lost control of their privacy. And most don’t care. \ud83d\ude2f Besides, haven’t we known for years that “Google is your friend”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,20],"tags":[428,130,513,424],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-stuff","category-youve-been-warned","tag-cell-phone","tag-google","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-EB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}