If you have a smart phone, then chances are good you have apps installed on it. Apps are great. They let you shop for clothes, order groceries, waste time on the toilet, and even connect with Granny. The problem is that when people install apps, they often dont look at the permissions of the app when they install. When you install an app, it requires certain permissions to access parts of your device. The kicker is, those permissions are not always relevant. If you install an app like Instagram or Facebook, it would make sense that the permissions required relate to accessing your camera and microphone, on the other hand, an app like Candycrush should never need access to those items. Its always a good idea to review the app permissions and if they seem suspicious, it’s best not to install the app. If you really need to install TapTap Babysitter 4 to keep the kiddos occupied on a 16 hour road trip to Disney, make sure you only grant the bare minimum permissions to the app, and uninstall it when you are done. Now you might be saying "Skutts, I have an iPhone 24 XLT and Apple cares about my privacy so I don’t need to worry" but that’s where you're wrong. Apple, like Samsung and Google, is a business. Businesses are there to make money and one of the ways they do that apart from selling you the phone, is by getting you to install apps from their store. Granted the stores have requirements that would prevent the apps from doing anything malicious, but that doesn't mean they won't abuse years conditioning that urges users to click next until they get what they want. This absolves the businesses of any perceived liability over privacy concerns because the user had to agree to the terms and permissions, whether the user actually reads it or not. So how can filling up on apps ruin your dinner? It boils down to the permissions you grant those apps. If you grant an app permission to your storage, camera, or microphone, you aren’t just granting them in context to the app use. That data can be shared with advertisers for market research, fed into AI systems to train them on image or facial recognition, or used to improve the functionality of the app. Regardless of the use, the data is off your system and out of your hands. What happens when whoever is holding onto that data suffers a breach? It could be something as harmless as the hacker posting a picture of your cat on Reddit for fake internet points. Or it could wind up as an awkward situation at family dinner when that creepy cousin you aren't sure is really related to you is browsing the darkweb and comes across your private Amazon wishlist containing an array of supplements to increase your height, strength, and telepathic abilities. Next thing you know, you're the family joke for the next 4 reunions until your other cousin gets busted for running an underground turtle smuggling ring. This all could have been avoided by refusing app installs based on permissions, granting limited permissions, and reviewing previous app permissions. I've included two links below, one for iOS and the other for Android, that relate to viewing app permissions.
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