Seriously thinking of going for a very basic phone that can do calls, emails, whatsapp/telegram and nothing else.
Sneaky phone apps just about obey the law, still have no trouble guzzling your data, says Which?
Apps use sneaky tactics to get UK users to hand over more info than they need to – and privacy policies remain long and confusing. These claims were this week emitted by Brit consumer rights body Which? in a report into data privacy of 29 commonly used Android and iPhone apps released. The investigation found that – despite …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 11:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not using Apps? Its no longer optional anymore
The following 'mission-creep' was in the news briefly before it was hidden away / buried. How long before its no longer optional to opt-out of Apps:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45590293
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"Fitness tracking to all policies - One of the largest life insurance providers will no longer offer policies that do not include digital fitness tracking. John Hancock will now sell only "interactive" policies that collect health data through wearable devices such as a smartwatch. Policyholders can earn discounts and rewards such as gift cards for hitting exercise targets.
"But critics said the announcement was "creepy" and "dystopian". - Activity-tracking devices such as the Apple Watch and Fitbit can record how much exercise somebody is doing and can be used to log dietary choices.
"But privacy advocates have warned that insurers could use tracking data to punish customers who fail to meet targets. "Naturally the American dystopian surveillance state will combine insurance with fat-shaming. Welcome to hell."
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 14:40 GMT Commswonk
Re: Not using Apps? Its no longer optional anymore
Given that with a FitBit, I can "run" a marathon without getting off the sofa...
Please spare us the details of your private life.
Having said that Mrs Commswonk once tried a FitBit or equivalent and was very surprised to find that while she had walked perhaps 10 or 15 yards hanging out the washing her "activity tracker" was of the view that she had done some considerable running. I had to explain that as it was mounted on her wrist it was merely counting how much arm waving she had done and nothing else.
Come to think of it she gave up on the idea more or less immediately thereafter.
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 12:23 GMT jmch
Re: Nothing new, nothing will ever change
"pages-long EULAs, now carried over to modern day Ts&Cs. There's little point in reading any of them"
Anything illegal (and even some nominally legal stuff) in T&Cs is unenforceable at law. The big corps keep getting away with it because there is little pushback from users challenging the T&Cs and no penalty to them from having illegal terms in T&Cs.
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Thursday 27th September 2018 23:45 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Nothing new, nothing will ever change
"The big corps keep getting away with it because there is little pushback from users challenging the T&Cs and no penalty to them from having illegal terms in T&Cs."
That's because the Big Corps know they will lose in court if challenged in a proper legal environment. They will prolong any legal action as much as possible to make it "go away", probably because the challenger runs out of money, or they will eventually settle out of court with an NDA attached to the pay-out.
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 16:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Nothing new, nothing will ever change
Been this way since the MS-DOS days of installing apps with pages-long EULAs, now carried over to modern day Ts&Cs.
The adage is usually that the beginning gives, and the end taketh away.
That reminded me of this wonderful cartoon about EULAs which is in my opinion absolutely brilliant (so is the rest of the series, btw).
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 12:32 GMT heyrick
Don't expect anything useful to happen
Great stinking advert pusher creates a mobile ecosystem in which it's practically impossible to opt out of all of this rubbish.
Is anybody surprised?
Do you remember the good old days when Google used to give its search results a "how long this took" with a stripped down front page just so it could be notably faster than AltaVista. Look how much dangling dollar signs changed all of that.
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Thursday 27th September 2018 17:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Don't expect anything useful to happen
I think Google's apparently blank search page is an example of deceptive design in itself. Just run a browser in dev mode and see just how much code you execute when loading that "blank" front (if you didn't have every blocker on the planet loaded) - it's scary.
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Thursday 27th September 2018 04:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Easy Fix
"Based on average reading it would take 22 hours, 21 minutes to read all the policies in one go."
Make all EULA un-skippable with the duration based on the average reading speed or directly compensate with pay per hour for the user to read. This will make users second think whether or not the app or service is worth getting and make companies reduce EULA to at most 0.999hr long.
Actually, laws should be done the same. Other than minimum salary pay per hour for the first 8hrs, if the reading duration of all the laws in a country exceed 8hrs, the government need to pay overtime pay to each citizen and exponentially increase for each additional days. All those pointless laws will be gone in a blink.
no, I do not feel sorry for the lawyers.
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Thursday 27th September 2018 16:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Web ID Ownership
I think over time we will probably have more control of our digital ID's and who gets to use them including apps, companies etc. GDPR is just a first step and our digital ID are our biggest online assets. Blockchain use cases are trying to bridge this gap but probably too early yet.
Basically friction between big tech, the regulator and how much the consumer cares....
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Thursday 27th September 2018 16:45 GMT TStub
Web ID
Hopefully in time we will have more control of our online ID's and who gets to use what information about us, there is a dynamic friction between big tech, the regulator and the consumer's willingness to give away what is one of their biggest online assets (who they are and what they do).
It is crazy to think that any consumer would read more than 2/3 pages (max!) of a privacy policy and that the average consumer is likely to understand the full implications.
There are some Blockchain use cases around ID but I suspect culture and technology have some way to go to catch up with their thinking.