Privacy and Smart Phones ! \r
Cellphone users dump apps to save privacy, lose their phones anyway\r
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Consumers have grown so concerned about privacy on their mobile phones that most avoid downloading some apps, and many others have removed apps out of concerns about data sharing, according to a survey released Wednesday. The Pew Internet & American Life survey also found that Americans lose their cellphones at alarming rates.\r
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Slightly more than half (54 percent) of cell phone consumers who use mobile apps have decided not to install an app after realizing how much personal information theyd have to share\r
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The new FTC report will be voted on in the next few weeks, which will bring about big changes to the Internet, prohibiting the use of behavioral marketing techniques to track children without their parents consent.\r
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From a childs physical location to other such personal information including their friends names and numbers, these are just some of what these apps are collecting from children. But according to the Childrens Online Privacy Protection, Section 1302 states that any person who operates a website located on the Internet or an online service and who collects or maintains personal information from or about the users of or visitors to such website or online service, or on whose behalf such information is collected or maintained, where such website or online service is operated for commercial purposes, including any person offering products or services for sale through that website or online service, involving commerce from a person under the age of 13 is in violation of the law.\r
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Sneaky Apps That Track Cellphones\r
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A perversion of smartphone technology called stalking apps — precise, secretive trackings of the movements of cellphone users — is increasingly a matter of national concern, particularly for domestic abuse victims. No less threatening is the routine monitoring of childrens locales and phone habits for commercial purposes while parents are kept in the dark. Stealth apps even stoop to cyber-leering through the now notorious app called Girls Around Me, which allows men to search out women, unbeknown to them, by cross-matching GPS technology with information and photo sites like Facebook.\r
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Cell phone users have no legitimate expectation of privacy -- judge\r
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A federal judge recently ruled that if someone has their cell phone turned on, their location data does not deserve protection under the Fourth Amendment, meaning law enforcement can track individuals without a search warrant.\r
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New York magistrate judge Gary Brown decided in favor of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who were seeking his approval over a warrant on a doctor who they suspected was being paid for issuing thousands of prescriptions. The warrant would have compelled the physicians phone company to provide real-time tracking data from his cell. \r
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Brown, certainly to the delight of police, issued a 30-page brief outlining his opinion that, by carrying a cell phone, someone is essentially waiving their Fourth Amendment right to due process. \r
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Given the ubiquity and celebrity of geolocation technologies, an individual has no legitimate expectation of privacy in the prospective of a cellular telephone where that individual has failed to protect his privacy by taking the simple expedient of powering it off, Brown wrote. \r
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As to control by the user, all of the known tracking technologies may be defeated by merely turning off the phone. Indeed -- excluding apathy or inattention -- the only reason that users leave cell phones turned on is so that the device can be located to receive calls. Conversely, individuals who do not want to be disturbed by unwanted telephone calls at a particular time or place simply turn their phones off, knowing that they cannot be located. \r
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He goes on to suggest that because there are smartphone applications available that allow users to locate people in their area with similar interests, cell phone customers should not expect their inherent right to privacy to be observed. \r
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Given the notoriety surrounding the disclosure of geolocation data to retailers purveying soap powder and blue jeans to mall shoppers, the police searching for David Pogues iPhone and, most alarmingly, the creators and users of the Girls Around You app, cell phone users cannot realistically entertain the notion that such information would (or should) be withheld from federal law enforcement agents searching for a fugitive.