Thinking about installing Pocket Ranger - Better read this!

...or some unscrupulous person uses you location info to do this:

://www.whio.com/news/news/national/woman-terrified-drone-outside-her-window/ngRWN/

...or some unscrupulous person uses you location info to do this:

://www.whio.com/news/news/national/woman-terrified-drone-outside-her-window/ngRWN/

Fizz wrote:
A whole lot of people still don't get it.
Nothing is free on the internet!
The currency of the internet is DATA!
You get a 'free' app in exchange for data.

I think the point is that people need to understand the cost and make an informed decision just as when they make any purchase. It's just a different currency that a large majority of those in the marketplace don't fully understand. My insurance app was worth the cost... up to a point, now I will deal with them from my PC or the phone (of course that will probably get me a couple of demerits on my rating) ;).

Dave

BroncosFan wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:
The more I read the more I appreciate my flip phone. :)

and some horse and buggy folks said those silly autos were a fad :B

LOL

fj12ryder wrote:
The more I read the more I appreciate my flip phone. :)

and some horse and buggy folks said those silly autos were a fad :B

A whole lot of people still don't get it.
Nothing is free on the internet!
The currency of the internet is DATA!
You get a 'free' app in exchange for data.

Think about this. If a game takes precise location data as a permission (becoming quite common) and your kids play that game...

Now consider that not all software companies run extensive checks on their employees, and some do nothing when they catch their employees doing terrible things to kids (ahem, Penn State, ahem)...

Do you really potentially want a child predator to have access to daily, hourly, or even live access to your child's location and travel habits?

What about stalkers? Ex's, or scumbags of all types? The DJI drone operator who simply inputs your gps and video stalks from silent 900ft above?

Privacy is not simply a matter of, "I don't have anything to hide."

Major companies with massive resources can't keep your credit card numbers safe. How safe do you think your info is? What is the collector of the info has a bad guy in the company?

Don't be a sheeple, think.

BTW, the program is state sponsored, so time to call/visit/etc your Rep and get him/ her OUTRAGED at how public funds are being used to take advantage of their constituents.

The more I read the more I appreciate my flip phone. :)

wa8yxm wrote:
...Many apps monitor the state of the phone (Phone calls) cause when the phone rings, they go into pause till you hang up.

Right, sometimes that makes sense. But I have stopped updating some of my favorite apps because they not only want to see if my phone is in use but also who I'm talking to. Now that probably isn't a big deal but one of those apps is my car insurance company. I already know they rate me on much, much more than my age, locale and driving record, but what is to stop them from also rating me on my phone logs.

As an aside... Law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain phone records. I wonder if my insurance company could legally buy my phone records from a third-party who got them because I stupidly gave them permission when I installed the third-party app. My guess is that when I installed the app I agreed to let them sell my information, so they could.

It's a slippery slope folks and people really should think about what they want an app owner to have access to. Time to get out the extra-heavy Reynold's foil for my hat...

Dave

MyPermissions helps give you (not much) but some control back, nice viewer tho.
http://lifehacker.com/mypermissions-shows-you-which-apps-are-accessing-your-d-1592133174

bwanshoom wrote:
At one point Google included the ability to selectively disable permissions for an app, but they said including it "was a mistake" and it was never intended for public release so it's now gone.