I’ve had a game I’ve been playing on my phone for a year or so now. I noticed they made a sequel and checked it out. Now that the Apple App Store shows you pretty plainly an idea of what data the apps mine, I checked out the one I’ve had for a while. Reading their privacy policy, they state they have collected users basic info- name, email, phone number- but also information like drivers license and social security numbers. Am I screwed? Do I delete the app?
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All of the major companies do this, they buy, sell and trade this data. If you don’t want that company to have access than yes delete, if you think the company may potentially lose your data or allow hackers to do their thing. Sony playstation had 300million some odd credit cards stored on a unsecured open access website. So If that’s how they store your bank info imagine how the others use your information?
Far more effective if you just throw your phone in the bin. Literally every single company is tracking everything. If the application is free you’re the product.
Absolutely delete it. That is deeply invasive. It also means they have enough information to steal your identity and take out loans in your name which you will be responsible for. Don’t just delete it. Zero out ALL its permissions. These are “Sucker” apps.
Download DuckDuckGo and use tracking protection. Last week it tells me that it stopped 30,000 tracking attempts.
The answer is “behavioral surplus.” When you use an app you provide obvious information, like how often you play, your friends list and stuff. But you also provide other kinds of information. When you use Uber the app knows where you were and where you were going. It knows who you were with. It knows when you like to travel, and common places you go. It knows where you live. It knows where you work. It knows when you sleep based on usage patterns. They know who you spend time with regularly (family and intimate partners) and who your friends are (based on proximity and frequency).
Uber Eats knows our favorite restaurants, what we like to eat, what times we get hungry.
So our phones know so much about us, and this is valuable. Advertisers want to know this obviously but so do insurance companies, and financial institutions (credit score for example), law enforcement can get this information. In the USA they need a subpoena to get your cellphone records. But they can buy usage data from a data broker legally and without a warrant and learn the same kinds of information about…. say… everyone at a protest. And then build profiles of those people based on that information, and plot out relationship networks.
Google “Surveillance Capitalism” if you want to read more in depth about this topic.
Here is an article to get you started:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html
How does an app gain access to your driving license and social security number? Firstly, where is this info stored in your phone to allow an app to be preprogrammed to know their exact location on your phone? Secondly, if there is a specific data field in IOS (I’m an Android user) to store these values, then why enter them? If you really need access to this info then store the data in a not so obvious way so a preprogrammed app can’t find it.
Sure you can uninstall the app to prevent it from getting new information.but the old info of you is still out there.
If you’re in the EU you can request they give you all the data they have on you and delete it.
They sell this data though, so to truly delete everything you’d probably have to track down who they sold it to, and repeat the process.
This is of course infeasible and many may just ignore you or outright deny you
I used to think, Who cares if they have my data? Then Roe vs. Wade was overturned and I realized how this information could be used against someone. I look at it very differently now.
It was annoying when Garmin stopped the apps for your computer so you had to store all the health and location data in the cloud on their servers. Which according to the EULA they monetise and share. Also more annoying when they got hacked and had to pay $10e6 to ransomware operators.
There are two pieces to this puzzle. First, how does it affect you? Second, how does it affect society?
Your data can used for various purposes: ads, analytics, stalker apps, government/police overreach, research studies, hackers, and so on. Some data might be used immediately, but because this data is around a long time, it might be used in many years.
Society also suffers. Pervasive tracking creates a surveillance state. It also makes targeted advertising more popular, which can be used for political or capital gain, which is cyclical.
I would recommend deleting the app. Good on you for asking this question!
This is a big, complex problem. There are no silver bullets or entirely culpable individuals, nor is there a consensus on the perfect solution. Individuals, technologists, and lawmakers have roles to play.
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