Why you should ensure that all those apps on your smartphone only run with the permissions they reasonably need to do their job
Friends mention exciting new apps or we see a promotion that requires an app to be downloaded, and the rush is on to download the app and start interacting with it. But do we consider the permissions needed by the app? Do we reconcile the permissions against functionality? Do we even bother reading the permissions? Unfortunately, the answer is probably a ‘no’, or at best it may be a ‘sometimes’.
Since October is dedicated to campaigns that promote cybersecurity and privacy awareness, let’s shine the spotlight on the growing importance of being mindful of what permissions we grant to mobile apps.
App permissions are complex, and it is not always obvious why an app may require a permission. And in reverse, it’s sometimes abundantly clear that an app probably does not need a permission. Take, for example, a battery monitoring app: does it need access to my precise location or the ability to create new accounts? Probably not.
I recently watched the Netflix documentary ‘The Great Hack’, an in-depth examination of the data company Cambridge Analytica and how data collected, mainly through social media, was being used to persuade voters in elections how to cast their vote. The narrator, Professor David Carroll, expressed concern that by the time his daughter is 18 there will be about 70,000 data points defining her. The big takeaway from the program is that data has surpassed oil as the world’s most valuable asset.
While many of the data points will come from information that is voluntarily shared through social med ..
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