Facebook has been in the news lately due to the scandals that have arisen after the leak of its users' personal data. But Facebook is not the only one on the list of applications that are tracking us!
Many apps have been accused of tracking their users over time. For example, last year Uber was accused of its employees tracking its users' routes.
People have recently started to worry more and more about the security of their personal data. And they are not wrong. If this data falls into the wrong hands it will certainly be a very unpleasant situation for its owners.
What's going on? Why do apps try so hard to invade our personal data? Some of them need it in order to function. For example, Google Maps needs to know your location so it can give you directions to a place you want to go.
But there are also some that collect more information than they really need. Pokemon Go, for example, was discovered to have access to a vast amount of information from Google accounts. However, the developer, Niantic, claimed that it never used data from Gmail accounts or Google Maps.
However, this data has great monetary value, especially for advertisers, who use it to send more targeted ads to users. It is estimated that by 2020, half of all advertising money will be spent on the internet.
However, there are some things we can do to be more secure. We check our Facebook, Twitter, and Google accounts to see which apps are sharing our data with. We change the privacy settings on our phones to limit the information that apps can access. And we always read the privacy policy.
