Your phone will tell on you
Dear PropellerHeads: So, I told my parents I was at my friend's house studying. Next thing I know they show up at the club where I'm chilling. I am in big trouble. How did they do that?
A: First, let me suggest you stick to studying and tell the truth to your parents. Now that I've taken care of that, here's how they knew where you were...
YOU TOLD THEM!
Yep. That iPhone or Android that you are perpetually messing with is telling your parents (and many others) exactly what you are up to.
In some cases, you should've known better. If you tweet (twitter.com) or post on facebook.com about what's going on, you just told your parents what you were up to. Remember this? "rents thk im studying...lets meet @ korovas @ 10."
Are you the foursquare.com mayor at your favorite hangout? Busted. Even if you didn't say anything, maybe your friend posted something about your evening on their Facebook page. Your parents probably saw that.
It makes sense to review the privacy settings on these various services so you can control what you are sharing. For Facebook, check out this site http://bit.ly/9fGlWq.
With a little care (i.e. no more drunk facebook photo uploads), you can keep a lot of your goings-on private. But there is more information out there about your travels than you think.
Your phone probably has a GPS locator built in. So, not only does your phone know where you are, but many applications on your phone know your location, too. For instance, accutracking.com, Sprint Family Locator (sfl.sprintpcs.com), Verizon's Chaperone (verizonwireless.com), Android's Lost Phone and Apple's Find My iPhone are all easy-to-use apps or services to find a smartphone. They could be used to find a phone that was stolen, but also can be used to find you.
Downloaded apps can tell a lot about you. When you installed a smartphone app, there was likely a screen where it described the information it would capture. If you are like most, you clicked through that screen without reading it because you just had to slingshot a few birds as quickly as possible.
It gets a little more insidious. Most phones have a unique device identifier (UDID). Many of the apps you download to your phone access your UDID along with other information. If the app also uses your GPS locator, you have told them who and where you are. So, basically, Angry Birds, Paper Toss, Pandora and other apps may be the real culprits.
A recent study found that out of 101 popular phone apps, 56 transmitted the phone's ID and 47 transmitted the location. Check out the Wall Street Journal article (blogs.wsj.com/wtk-mobile) showing what information your downloaded apps are capturing.
In some cases, a location-aware app simply uses your GPS to identify your location as part of the social networking experience. Some just use the information to help better target advertising. But you can imagine how this information might be useful to the burglar who wants to know when you won't be home for a while.
You might want to visit www.privacyrights.org, which covers not only smartphone privacy but most of today's technology privacy challenges.
see phone, C8
from C4
What all of this means is that it is getting increasingly difficult to maintain your privacy. If you enjoy the convenience of your smartphone, you may have to live with some of that. With some care, you can minimize what your electronic spy tells others - but you really can't stop it. To do that, leave the phone at home.
Now, don't you have some studying to do?
When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. E-mail them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.