On personal privacy - Business Works
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On personal privacy

Nabil Shabka, Director zuuMedia What a complex issue personal privacy is. Where do you draw the line? Giving up some privacy has some benefits so they say. One ID card with a micro chip means it’s easy for you to get access to services, pay for things, clear immigration or simply prove who you are – or someone posing as you.

I’ve been following two disturbing trends recently and both involve monitoring in some way:

  • apps that access all the data on your phone and social networking site
  • phone tracking software to 'make sure your family and children are safe'

This is some scary stuff. Let’s look at the apps first – have you ever read the T&Cs. Why does a jogging app need access to your contacts and calendar, or your Facebook and google+ account? Or your calls list, or text messages? ll apps seem to need this now and to be able to upload it to their servers. WHY? There is no justifiable reason why – it’s so they can make more money by selling your information and milking your content. This needs to stop IMHO, but not in everyone else’s. I asked my son about it and he said that at first he was worried about it but when nothing bad happened and as an app had been down loaded 100s of thousands of time he wasn’t concerned any more. I think we’ve heard that rationale before.

In the UK for quite awhile now you’ve been able to track people through their mobiles – of course so you can snoop on protect your kids – and spy on locate your spouse. In the US there’s a new service called Family Locator, just in case you lose them, happens to me all the time. You know, I don’t know how we ever managed to grow up safely without all these tools. Having to use pay phones and not being in constant contact was so dangerous, I am really surprised children ever got home for dinner or survived long enough to turn into surveillance obsessed parents. As for spouses – wonder if this will push the divorce rate up. Forget affairs, how about, "I'm still at work" when you’re actually having a drink with a work colleague ... Actually, nah, I’m sure someone will come up with an app that will allow errant kids and spouses to spoof the whole thing.



Nabil Shabka is Director of zuuMedia and can be contacted via: www.zuumedia.com/





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