As we discussed previously that your mobile device contains all your personal information like your current location, contact list, emails, conversations, messages, travel plan and so much more. And the apps you installed to the devices are the infiltrators to your personal space and some of them are quite nosier. Let us list out the worst apps and then you would realize how dangerous you are putting your own privacy on risks.
Facebook tracks everything across its app, messenger and website. Not only your online activities, posts, pictures but also your log off time is recorded. It requires almost every permission from you to get the access to your Contact lists, Call history, Text messages, Camera, Microphone, Internal storage, Wi-Fi and Location. In other words, its app wants full control of your devices and claims it’s mandatory for the needs to properly run all the functionalities.
Besides, Facebook knows exactly when you logged in, how much time you spent on its platform, where you have been, what you browse and are interested and even what you have purchased. They collect all this information and then serve you the targeted ads. What does this mean? It means that Facebook has leaked its user data through numerous breaches and it makes your personal info insecure and exposed.
Messenger
Facebook Messenger is the worst because it doesn’t even use end-to-end encryption for the conversations by default and not many users know how to access this hidden feature. Your personal messages may probably be stored in plain text on their servers and any employee with login credentials can get the data easily if he/she has the intention.
The owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, confesses that the algorithm routinely scans and moderators reads all clients’ messages, hyperlinks and pictures in order to block any improper or suspicious ones which don’t comply with company policy.
It’s true that these measures will stop fake news and illegal content from spreading; however, you can’t just trust them 100% to use your information only for good purpose. You should keep in mind that Facebook:
- Saved all customers’ logins data in plain text
- Logged text messages and phone calls without seeking the permission from their users
- Has been breached in a few occasions
- Requested for users’ email passwords to spam their contacts
Weather Apps
All these fancy weather apps want to access your location. It does sound pretty logical that it needs to know your current location in order to tell you the weather. However, after you grant them the permission to track your location, the app does the tracking 24/7 and even sells your information to the advertisers. Here are the examples of the mentioned application:
- AccuWeather
- WeatherBug
- The Weather Channel App
In fact, it’s not just limited to the weather apps you should worry about your privacy. It can be any other app getting your information and then presents the location-based news or bombs you with tons of advertisings such as local restaurants recommendations. There is no guarantee that your location data would be handled properly nor be leaked or sold for any purpose.
Online Mobile Games
Multiplayer games are based on interaction and players engagement. You can complete quests, get level-up, solve puzzles, and have fun together with your friends and family. But there are games which overly request the access to get your personal data that you should be more careful such as Words with Friends.
Zynga, the company created Words with Friends, famous FarmVille and a lot of successful games, tracks and logs all kinds of personal information as below list:
- username
- first name / last name
- biographic age
- birthday
- gender
- contacts list
- all in-game purchases and details
- everything players posted within the message boards
- chat history and messages
- Facebook ID
- physical location
Besides, they also use cookies, beacons, pixel tags, clear gifs, and device identifiers to track your information such as:
- IP locations
- Computer or mobile device type that you are using to play their games
- Operating system version
- Language
- Device identifiers
- Browser type
- Viewed pages and URLs
Think about all this information you have to provide like mentioned above just because you like to play the online scrabble game? Of course, Zynga is not the only popular company within online mobile game industry and there are also lots of developers tracking their players’ information and then sell it to the highest bidder for self’s benefits. What if the sold data is a piece of very important information of yours?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
