[governance] Massive, continuing, and apparently legal invasion of personal privacy

[Roland Perry]

In message <p06200703cb62ce083221@[10.0.1.4]>, at 10:18:03 on Thu, 16 
Feb 2012, George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at gmail.com> writes
>If this group wants a cause célèbre in the area of invasion of personal 
>privacy, you might want to consider this report:
>
>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/google-and-mobile-apps-take-dat
>a-books-without-permission/?hpw

This kind of thing is the reason I have never used any "standard" email 
or address book applications bundled with a PC (or a phone) to store 
contact information. If there's nothing to steal...

(Of course, my SIM has a small list of mainly other mobile numbers and a 
'nickname' for each, but that's the bare minimum for operational 
convenience).

Do they ask the user if they can "find more friends" then fail to 
explain that the method they use is to examine your address book, rather 
than using telepathy or a Ouija board? As a tweet I read yesterday 
sarcastically said: "Foursquare knows where I am - what a liberty, they 
should stop that immediately".

Or is the "leaky address book friend finding" built in to some of the 
applications, and you can't stop it at all? Only 'some' of the listed 
applications apparently fail to get permission, it's unfortunate they 
don't bother to list which.

I've just finished a project to bring more awareness to vulnerable users 
regarding what information leaks from their smartphone, and there's 
still more work to do. And understanding what the consequences are of 
giving permission is the elephant in the room, rather than the failure 
of some applications to ask.

Looking on the bright side, there is concern expressed in the article 
about eavesdropping of the traffic, but that's encrypted (on the airwave 
segment at least) by A5 in the case of a smartphones, an extra layer of 
protection not afforded to fixed Internet users on ADSL or cable.
-- 
Roland Perry

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t