Apps take our data. But do they need all of the details they make us provide them?
Facebook added Off-Facebook Activity some time ago to let you know which apps and websites transfer user data to the social network and to forbid them from doing it. Does it make us optimistic? Hardly.
We got used to the fact that each and every app asks for our data, as much as we can give. And we have to give it as developers simply don’t allow us to use their products if we don’t agree to their terms and conditions.
JBL Connect, for example, will not even launch if you don’t allow it to access your location (the request to enable location services is a frequent one). Why does the application the functionality of which concerns only firmware updating and interconnection of two or more speakers even need this data? How GPS coordinates will be a help? In no way it will.
But you can simply avoid installing the JBL app, it’s not the most inevitable soft. A speaker can definitely function without it. The same doesn’t go for Samsung’s app working with its panoramic Gear 360 camera — Gear 360 Manager. The app can’t be launched if geolocation isn’t enabled. And the situation is intricate here, because you can’t work directly with the results the camera produces. The app implements an important task — it sews together initial shots and videos made by the camera into 360° ones.
There are much simpler examples. TVs listen to conversations — Samsung admitted to doing that via their screens with a Smart TV function. And if they couldn’t listen due to some reason they would take other data (The Washington Post found out that biggest manufacturers recorded and sent customers’ TV screenshots to their servers). These functions can’t be disallowed even if you configured the settings appropriately.
Wacom drawing tablets want to know about all software launched on a PC. What for? This is a rhetorical question. Here’s an example of what BOSE headphones collect and send about you, although the only thing they should do is to play audio:
· Activation time of different functions/settings
· Time and date of usage
· Keystrokes
· Devices which headphones connect to
· Volume
· Audio stream data (saved content, stations which you listen to, playlists, singers and bands, albums, songs and podcasts)
· Time zone
· Transaction data for DRM (for example, information for music content providers, necessary for the distribution of remuneration to artists depending on the content being played)
And again the company complicates lives of its clients. Collection and sending of information begins after the official Bose Connect app is installed. You don’t have to install it but users noticed that in a certain version you can’t activate noise cancellation in headphones. Everyone wants to spy.
Of course, on the Internet you can find “filtered” versions based on official applications or free tools offering only those functions which you need them to. But the key issue is in availability. To find a solution to a problem you first need to realise what the problem is. One fact just won’t settle in users’ minds — people who use a product for free become a product.
Companies answering the question about data collection insist that they gather only anonymised data which can’t lead to a person identification. This is partially true. One set of anonymised data can’t lead to a particular individual, but if there are many data sets the task becomes solvable — Harvard John A. Paulson School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences has already proven it.
Moreover, a company doesn’t have to collect your data if it wants to remain impeccable — it can buy your data from others. Facebook has recently reluctantly informed its users about that.
The social network gave us the opportunity to learn about which services and apps “report us”. The list can be disappointing: it comprises messengers, map services, music players and fitness apps. Nearly all. If you don’t find one of your apps in the list, you should be aware that it might report you to someone else.
And that’s when enlightenment comes. What does Facebook offer you to do with it? Nothing. The network allows you to deactivate the transfer of information about future activities for applicationname/sitename. But if you read the disclaimer you will see that nothing will actually get deactivated. You’ll just stop receiving notifications about data collection from the app/website.
Keeping our minds shut seems to be the only way to retain rights to our data. Until we share our details with perfect services for perfectly clear processing we should stick to the self-proclaimed rule — the less we share, the better.
