Posted on 01/31/2014 6:27:25 AM PST by cotton1706
A group led by a Rutgers University professor just created an Android smartphone app that notifies users when their location data is being tracked and transmitted by another app.
Assistant professor Janne Lindqvist’s new app displays a banner across Android screens saying, “Your location is accessed by [app name],” when said app is transmitting location data, taking advantage of technology already present on the Android operating system that few users were aware even existed.
“People were really surprised that some apps were accessing their location, or how often some apps were accessing their location,” Lindqvist told MIT Technology Review of the app’s beta testing group, many of whom were “shocked” at the frequency of the alerts.
According to Lindqvist’s research paper describing the project, he hopes applications like the one developed by his team, will push other application developers to take more steps toward information gathering transparency in future products, and even motivate them to collect less data, or give consumers a choice about the amount of data collected.
Google used to give Android users the option of enabling or disabling specific app permissions, but removed the feature in a recent operating system software update from December. The company also has a built-in mechanism to prevent apps from surveilling other apps, which Lindqvist’s team essentially programmed around with a process known as “rooting” to make their app function.
A similar app called “ProtectMyPrivacy” already exists for Apple iPhones, but users have to “jailbreak,” or hack the operating system to install it. Unlike Google however, Apple gives iPhone users the option of enabling or disabling location tracking for specific apps.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
What if the app has been hacked?.............
What if the app was planted by the NSA?
What if the app is a lie, and doesn’t do anything? How would you know?..................
That was my first thought as well.
> What if the app was planted by the NSA?
That was my first thought as well.
Great times we live in that 0 brought upon us eh?
My favorite app on my iphone is the Waze navigation-road alert function, and when I log onto my internet account for waze and hit the real map function it plots my recent driving routes on the map.
But its easy to turn off too.
So far I stay away from jailbreak to avoid viruses.
Wish they’d have given a name to look for when it shows up on Play Store.
Save
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