Are My Phone Apps Listening To Me?

By Luke Smits - Founder & Operations Manager

Let’s face it, most of us can probably admit to being a little lax about our online footprint and what the Internet knows about you.

Do you grant access to your phone’s camera for any app that requests it? Do your apps have access to your microphone?

It can be easy to let these things slide, but you should think carefully before giving an app access to your microphone – think about it, why does your news app need access to your microphone? It’s all too easy to not care, click the ‘accept’ button and move on to what you need the app for.

We have all heard of anecdotes where someone has been talking about a product or service, something they’ve not Googled or browsed online. Then, within hours, they see adverts for that product or service. No one thinks this is a coincidence, right?

This article from March 2018 discusses apps like Facebook spying on our conversations and optimising this data for advertising campaigns - http://money.com/money/5219041/how-to-turn-off-phone-microphone-facebook-spying/

Consider this the next time you install an app and it asks you for permission to access your phones, camera or microphone.

Consider: does Candy Crush need access to my microphone? That food ordering app I downloaded – why does it want access to my camera? Weigh up if you really need that app or is there another app that may do a better job? Perhaps there’s a website you can access to obtain the same info not in app-form?

Taking a little more time to consider your privacy and reducing the potential for apps and businesses to spy on you will help make your world and your cyber security that little bit safer.

Luke Smits (Operations and Sales Manager)