[/caption]Many Americans use smart phones on a daily basis. What they don't know is that smart phones also use them. Phones such as the Apple iPhone or Google's Android devices regularly share people's personal information via many various applications without their knowledge or knowing consent.
These devices share such information as their user's current location, age, gender, full name and sometimes a phone's unique ID number. This information is usually shared with advertisers.
According to a test done by the Wall Street Journal, 56 out of 100 popular smartphone applications from both iPhone and Android devices transmitted the phone's unique device ID to companies without the user's consent or knowledge. Forty-seven apps transmittted their location in some way. Five of them sent age, gender and a few other personal details to outside companies. These statistics should be more than enough to make most people worry about their privacy. However, in recent times, people have become accostumed to having their lives and their personal details become more and more public. Most people aren't really worried about how this can affect them.
The unique ID number in an iPhone is called a UDID, a Unique Device Identifier. It can't be blocked or deleted, hence it is often used to track phone users.
"The great thing about mobile is you can't clear a UDID like you can a cookie," says Meghan O'Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps. "That's how we track everything."
Ms. O'Holleran says Traffic Marketplace, a unit of Epic Media Group, monitors smartphone users whenever it can. "We watch what apps you download, how frequently you use them, how much time you spend on them, how deep into the app you go," she says. She says the data is aggregated and not linked to an individual.
This shows that people should become more aware of the information they give their electronic devices, especially the ones that can be tracked and traced.
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