In the News:
Various mobile applications have been greeted with mixed reactions of excitement and skepticism due to their perceived privacy concerns. TikTok, a popular video-sharing app, just surpassed two billion downloads. In a recent article for cnet.com, Steven Musil discusses its popularity as well as the controversy surrounding it. In 2018, Social Media giant Facebook, (which owns applications including Facebook Messenger and Instagram), faced harsh criticism for its handling of the Cambridge Analytica data leak among other privacy concerns. This criticism has lead to Facebook’s focus on privacy by prompting their users to review their recently updated privacy settings.
Our Take:
Mobile applications come with information that can be reviewed before being downloaded onto a user’s phone. That information often includes the seller, developer website, and privacy policy among other things. Data privacy is treated differently in different countries, and applications downloaded in the US come from all over the world. Data protection and privacy legislation worldwide is available from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
It is helpful for users to be aware of what the application they are downloading is requesting access to, and how it will use the data it has access to so they can protect their data from unwanted access and potential exploitation. Applications that may seem like a benign game could be collecting your data and using it for various purposes. A bubble-pop game does not have any reason to request your microphone, camera, or other data stored on your phone. The good news is that Apple has increased user accessibility to understand how applications use and protect privacy data. (We’ve blogged about this!)
Recommendations:
- Review the information available on an application before downloading it onto your phone.
- Check your privacy settings to see and edit which applications are accessing your microphone, camera, location, and other sensitive data.
- Delete applications you no longer need, especially if they are accessing or using your data.
- Make sure the benefit outweighs the risk to your data with each app you download. Decide what is best for you.
For more information on how to protect your mobile device, check out:
https://www.it.northwestern.edu/security/device-tips.html