This results in massive surveillance on which the user has absolutely no control.
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Facebook offered a convenient proprietary library for building mobile apps, which also sent personal data to Facebook. Lots of companies built apps that way and released them, apparently not realizing that all the personal data they collected would go to Facebook as well.
It shows that no one can trust a nonfree program, not even the developers of other nonfree programs. The AppCensus database gives information on how Android apps use and misuse users' personal data. Collecting hardware identifiers is in apparent violation of Google's policies. But it seems that Google wasn't aware of it, and, once informed, was in no hurry to take action.
This proves that the policies of a development platform are ineffective at preventing nonfree software developers from including malware in their programs.
Many nonfree apps have a surveillance feature for recording all the users' actions in interacting with the app. Other technical flaws were found as well. Moreover, a previous investigation had found that half of the top 10 gratis VPN apps have lousy privacy policies. The Weather Channel app stored users' locations to the company's server. The company is being sued, demanding that it notify the users of what it will do with the data.
We think that lawsuit is about a side issue. What the company does with the data is a secondary issue. The principal wrong here is that the company gets that data at all. Other weather apps , including Accuweather and WeatherBug, are tracking people's locations. Some of them send Facebook detailed information about the user's activities in the app; others only say that the user is using that app, but that alone is often quite informative. Some Android apps track the phones of users that have deleted them. The Spanish football streaming app tracks the user's movements and listens through the microphone.
We expect it implements DRM, too—that there is no way to save a recording. But we can't be sure from the article. If you learn to care much less about sports, you will benefit in many ways. This is one more. Furthermore, they could detect only some methods of snooping, in these proprietary apps whose source code they cannot look at. The other apps might be snooping in other ways. This is evidence that proprietary apps generally work against their users.
To protect their privacy and freedom, Android users need to get rid of the proprietary software—both proprietary Android by switching to Replicant , and the proprietary apps by getting apps from the free software only F-Droid store that prominently warns the user if an app contains anti-features.
Grindr collects information about which users are HIV-positive, then provides the information to companies. Grindr should not have so much information about its users. It could be designed so that users communicate such info to each other but not to the server's database. The moviepass app and dis-service spy on users even more than users expected.
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It records where they travel before and after going to a movie. Tracking software in popular Android apps is pervasive and sometimes very clever. Some trackers can follow a user's movements around a physical store by noticing WiFi networks. AI-powered driving apps can track your every move. The Sarahah app uploads all phone numbers and email addresses in user's address book to developer's server.
Google did not intend to make these apps spy; on the contrary, it worked in various ways to prevent that, and deleted these apps after discovering what they did. So we cannot blame Google specifically for the snooping of these apps. On the other hand, Google redistributes nonfree Android apps, and therefore shares in the responsibility for the injustice of their being nonfree. It also distributes its own nonfree apps, such as Google Play, which are malicious.
Could Google have done a better job of preventing apps from cheating? There is no systematic way for Google, or Android users, to inspect executable proprietary apps to see what they do. Google could demand the source code for these apps, and study the source code somehow to determine whether they mistreat users in various ways. If it did a good job of this, it could more or less prevent such snooping, except when the app developers are clever enough to outsmart the checking. But since Google itself develops malicious apps, we cannot trust Google to protect us.
We must demand release of source code to the public, so we can depend on each other. Apps for BART snoop on users.
A study found Android apps that track users by listening to ultrasound from beacons placed in stores or played by TV programs. Faceapp appears to do lots of surveillance, judging by how much access it demands to personal data in the device. Users are suing Bose for distributing a spyware app for its headphones.
Specifically, the app would record the names of the audio files users listen to along with the headphone's unique serial number. The suit accuses that this was done without the users' consent. If the fine print of the app said that users gave consent for this, would that make it acceptable? No way! It should be flat out illegal to design the app to snoop at all.
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Pairs of Android apps can collude to transmit users' personal data to servers. A study found tens of thousands of pairs that collude. Verizon announced an opt-in proprietary search app that it will pre-install on some of its phones. The app will give Verizon the same information about the users' searches that Google normally gets when they use its search engine.
Currently, the app is being pre-installed on only one phone , and the user must explicitly opt-in before the app takes effect. The Meitu photo-editing app sends user data to a Chinese company. The Uber app tracks clients' movements before and after the ride. Following is a non-exhaustive list, taken from the research paper, of some proprietary VPN apps that track users and infringe their privacy:. Some portable phones are sold with spyware sending lots of data to China. Facebook's new Magic Photo app scans your mobile phone's photo collections for known faces , and suggests you to share the picture you take according to who is in the frame.
This spyware feature seems to require online access to some known-faces database, which means the pictures are likely to be sent across the wire to Facebook's servers and face-recognition algorithms. Facebook's app listens all the time, to snoop on what people are listening to or watching. In addition, it may be analyzing people's conversations to serve them with targeted advertisements.
A pregnancy test controller application not only can spy on many sorts of data in the phone, and in server accounts, it can alter them too. Apps that include Symphony surveillance software snoop on what radio and TV programs are playing nearby. The article takes for granted that the usual analytics tools are legitimate, but is that valid?
Software developers have no right to analyze what users are doing or how. According to Edward Snowden, agencies can take over smartphones by sending hidden text messages which enable them to turn the phones on and off, listen to the microphone, retrieve geo-location data from the GPS, take photographs, read text messages, read call, location and web browsing history, and read the contact list. This malware is designed to disguise itself from investigation. In August it demanded users submit to increased snooping , and some are starting to realize that it is nasty.