Submitted via IRC for ErnestGoesToSpace
Free apps marketed to people with depression or who want to quit smoking are hemorrhaging user data to third parties like Facebook and Google — but often don't admit it in their privacy policies, a new study reports. This study is the latest to highlight the potential risks of entrusting sensitive health information to our phones.
Though most of the easily-found depression or smoking cessation apps in the Android and iOS stores share data, only a fraction of them actually disclose this. The findings add to a string of worrying revelations about what apps are doing with the health information we entrust to them. For instance, a Wall Street Journal investigation recently revealed the period tracking app Flo shared users' period dates and pregnancy plans with Facebook. And previous studies have reported health apps with security flaws or that shared data with advertisers and analytics companies.
(Score: 2, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday April 21 2019, @07:58PM (1 child)
Unpresidented PERFECT SCORE on Montreal Cognitive Test. 100%!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @09:01PM
Ok fine, if you have Data on your side maybe he will be able to fix all that shit you fucked up. We can skip jail time if you give him more leeway.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 21 2019, @08:26PM
If you thought you were depressed, just wait!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @08:28PM
In the early days of surveillance capitalism it was becoming apparent that you were being profiled through your Google searches, and your profile was available from anyone willing to pay, up to the government.
Now you have stupid apps for any condition and every feeling, and they're all "free". How do they pay the programmers? How does management get the boner to even hire programmers to develop this? Obviously because your data is on sale, and the app gives them access a browser frontend does not (yet).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @08:32PM
Are the researchers now getting marketed with happy pills and nicotine gums? Are they being denied insurance, because information has revealed they are smokers?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Sunday April 21 2019, @08:54PM (3 children)
And, in general, free "apps" are marketed to stupid people who will never understand or care about how their personal information is mined and sold.
Don't forget to download our FREE Weather App/Spyware! (We swear, we only use your GPS coordinates to give you your latest forecast right where you are. We swear we would never collect that, record your movments, and sell that to the highers bidder! Oh, and here is an advertisment for that store you just walked by!)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 22 2019, @02:52AM (2 children)
I like banggood.com, they have cool stuff for really good prices. Sure, their marketing is aggressive - but it's kind of cute in its own broken english way.
I also play a couple of free games like chess, reversii, etc. on my phone - what was pretty educational was when I opened a banggood e-mail promo and looked at a particular LED yard floodlight, ended up deciding that I don't need it, even if it was stupid cheap and really kind of powerfully cool (actually, thinking about it, I could use some more light INSIDE the garage, and 50W of LED for $9.99.....) Anyway, ever since I opened that e-mail promo, my free games have that particular banggood product in their ad rotations. I don't think it's wrong, it's fine by me, and it also is informative about how well your "free apps" know you.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @02:21PM (1 child)
its wrong
games aren't supposed to advertise anything; they are an escape, a distraction.
having the real world close in on you and demand money based on what they determined about you via spying is by no means adding anything to a relaxing pursuit.
the days of shareware are gone i suppose
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @03:43PM
Have fallen to individual greed, corporate/robber baron interests, and political corruption/collusion once again.
Fear not young one, for it will never be spoken of in school and as long as you take your happy pills and watch reality on TV, you will never be the wiser. And pray that you don't, because big brother's eyes are far more watchful than they ever were in the movies...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @09:46PM (1 child)
They would release a free Quran app so they would know where all the Moslems are located. Not that they would ever need to round them up, but you can't be too careful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @09:51PM
They could pay for its development by selling user data to goat farmers (I mean for halal meat sales, not traditional Moslem sex).
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday April 21 2019, @09:47PM (3 children)
Which ones didn't share?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday April 21 2019, @10:57PM (2 children)
Just assume it was a nice, round number.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 22 2019, @02:46AM (1 child)
Round, like the letter O?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday April 22 2019, @04:52AM
Or an ellipse, the roundest number I know.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 21 2019, @10:56PM
You'd have to be crazy to trust your privacy to one of th...oh. Ohhhhh. Well, pizdec.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @01:52AM
It's going to share your data.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 22 2019, @02:44AM
That X app, might share your data without telling you.
That FREE X app probably does share your data, because if they didn't, where's the motivation to make it?
Anything you transmit "to the cloud," particularly wirelessly from a phone, though "secure" WiFi is also suspect, you can assume _might_ be intercepted and collated into a database by one or more counter-terrorism fishing fleets with access to the data streams.
It's really nothing new - very few "confidential" psychologists are 100% true to their responsibilities to their patients, particularly when a crime - even substance abuse - is involved. When I attended Catholic school, we got a lesson in the "sanctity of the confessional" when a number of boys did something exceptionally un-Catholic and were assigned a stiff penance - it wasn't 3 hours before the head nun was berating the boys about not performing their penance as assigned, and none of the boys had mentioned anything to the nun - it was the priest who told her apparently all about it. Of course: Catholic priests and young boys, consider ourselves lucky that the confessional was the worst sanctity compromised in our school (yes, that was "a thing" even back in the 1970s it was in the news - 50 years later it apparently still has not improved...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @06:40AM
Inspect the source code yourself before compiling and running it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @07:46PM
If they are spying on you? No! So get the app and be instantly healed!