JINKANGHONG

Many people have used the iPhone flashlight, an all-in-one flashlight, which allows the iPhone's LED flash to shoot a steady, bright beam, which can be useful when the pen falls into a dark sofa. But you may not realize that after downloading the app, you may give a bunch of data to advertisers. Even if it is a flashlight application, it can request a bunch of user data, access calendar, location and camera. Thanks to the iPhone's privacy control, users can control their rights autonomously, but the truth is that most people do not choose "No" when they jump out of this type of asking permission warning.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has banned a flashlight application that does not notify consumers to download user data without permission, and these seemingly harmless applications are only a small part of the problem. On mobile phones, many applications may require information permission that may not be needed. It should be noted that there is no so-called free application at all in mobile applications. The privacy issues of the entire mobile application world are darker and more cumbersome than the desktop computer world.

"Very dark"

The "Allrounder" application was developed by iHandy, but the company did not respond to privacy issues. However, a mobile phone security company named Appthority analyzed the data that may be required by the “all-round flashlight” application, and the results were quite frightening.

Appthority said that "all-around flashlight" can perform location tracking, read the user's calendar, use the camera and access a unique identifier to identify the user's mobile phone, and then share the data with many ad networks, including Google's AdMob, iAd, and JumpTap. The app may not have done all of these things. Appthority's analysis only shows what the app can do, but it is suspicious to have so many suspicious uses.

It is difficult to understand why a flashlight application needs to track users or view user calendars. "All of these things are pretty dark, and there are a lot of advertising networks integrated within the app to share data."

Data hunger

Flashlight applications have a bad reputation for data leakage. FTC traced the developer of the "Brightest Flashlight" application last year because the company cheated on the way users share data with ad networks.

According to analysis, there are at least several applications requesting data on ordinary users' mobile phones. A music app that simulates guitar chords shares data with advertising networks. A code analysis of the application found that it can be used for location tracking or access to the address book, although there is no evidence that the application is doing both.

Another interesting application is Stack the States, which also shares data with an advertising network. But if you spend 0.99 dollars to buy a paid version, all the tracking features disappear, it becomes a good application without privacy issues.

Data collection as insurance

The problem now is that application developers are not completely honest in sharing and selling data with advertising networks. The reason why this problem is troublesome is that the data stored on the mobile phone is more closely and lastingly related to ours. For example, it shows where we live and work and where we want to go.

The website tracks PC users through browser cookies, which can easily be erased. However, many mobile applications track users by UDID (a unique device identifier, which is equivalent to a mobile phone's serial number) or IMEI (International Mobile Identity, a mobile network's unique code for identifying subscribers).

Analysts say that many applications require partial access to the phone without explaining why. This type of thing is very common, especially by updating applications that require more permissions. Many developers may not make a lot of money through application downloads or clicks on advertisements, so they feel safe to collect consumer data as much as possible.

good news

The good news is that hardware manufacturers seem to be aware of this issue and decide to take action. Apple offers options that make it easy to control which services an application can use. You can open or close the application by going to Settings -> Privacy ->. When you do this, you will find that many apps require permission to access the phone's microphone and location service.

Google also developed a similar technology called App Opps for Android, but then abandoned the technology, claiming that it cannot be released because it may damage applications installed on the phone.

For iOS users, it is best to remove the flashlight application, because Apple added a built-in flashlight feature at iOS 7.