It’s Behind You! Facebook Intrudes!

Do you find it annoying when you’re sending a text message from your phone and someone is behind you looking and reading the message? If this is you and you’re a user of Facebook then you need to carry on reading!

Believe it or not some of the top internet firms such as Facebook, Yahoo and Flickr have the ability to be able to read personal text messages and photographs sent via smartphones because when you use an app through your phone when you agree to the terms and conditions you actually grant them permission to do so!

Many are unaware that when you agree to those terms and conditions what you’re actually doing is saying that the developers have your permission to inspect your personal information, collect whatever content they can and in some cases the apps can see whatever images the phone camera is seeing.

The information comes from a highly successful app business that has products which are downloaded at 5,000 a day! He stated that the information was requested by the advertisers. When companies and businesses choose to have apps made most originally want to sell them but they are advised not to because the revenue they will get from giving them away free and just loading them with advertisements is worth so much more.

However since the announcement from Facebook, Yahoo and Flickr amongst others Twitter has got involved too admitting that they copied lists of email addresses and phone numbers from any user of their app without user’s permission. These were then stored on the servers.

The almighty late Apple founder, Steve Jobs in 2007 spoke of the dangers of intrusive apps. If only people had taken note and acted upon this. He said that intrusive apps “want to take a lot of your personal data and suck it up” this is then stored.

What do you think about your personal information being taken through use of an app without permission or with permission gained through lengthy terms and conditions which if were honest no one really reads!

What apps are on your smartphone currently that may be intrusive?

It most certainly is food for thought!