Rep. Markey disclosure revealed a lucrative scheme involving the security state outsourcing data gathering to ten major telecommunications companies, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. These companies made million of dollars supplying law enforcement agencies with personal telecom information.
However, a far bigger issue involves most of the major websites, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and iTunes, that systematically collect user data and commercializes it for corporate purposes; the telecoms engage in the same practice.
Many web companies fulfill government requests for a user’s personal information, but Google is one of the few companies that publicly reveal such requests. Most recently, it reported that during the second-half of 2011, U.S. government agencies made 12,243 requests and that it complied with 93 percent of them (11,386). This is 1,000 a month; what’s going on?
Wireless devices are two-way technologies. In addition to uploaded valuable personal data, wireless customers are sitting ducks for downloaded junk. Most smartphone users are unaware that when they download a “free” app they are downloading a Trojan horse.
According to a recent study by Lookout Mobile Security, more than half of the free apps embed advertising in their offerings and that these offerings are provided by ad networks. It estimates that 5 percent of all smartphone apps (representing 80 million downloads) are embedded with "aggressive" ad networks that can change bookmark settings and deliver ads outside the app they are embedded in. Games, and especially Google Play, had the highest rate of ad placements. The data from all these apps are being collected, analyzed and exploited for commercial gain.
No comments:
Post a Comment