Application developers have made it an unmentioned requirement to access users data.
When a user installs an application on phone, it is compulsory for him/her to allow information access before the application is enabled to fully function on their devices.
However, you find that most of these applications are a must-have. For instance, in the current digital era. The youth are always yearning to be at par with everyone else in other parts of the world.
Applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook and the mushrooming money lending applications among others have made it compulsory to access the users’ data.
This data includes users personal photos, contacts, location, messages and background data.
Although it’s a necessity to at least allow a few of your close contacts to have access to your information for emergency purposes. In the case of these applications, where do users information go?
Distressed users have on various occasions re-counted on social media pages about incidences that have occurred to them after sharing their data to application developers who might have colluded with fraudsters. The scammers end up siphoning them off their valuables especially money.
Others users narrated that, their contacts were often reached out because they did not meet their loan deadlines as agreed by the lenders.
Recently, in a social media survey in one of the notorious Facebook group in Kenya, several users narrated their experiences with a loan application that called their friends, colleagues and relatives once they failed to repay their loans on time an indication of a data breach.
When installing these applications, customers are assured of secure data. Once access is given, some companies breach this agreement and then subject customers to hackers and other insecurity threats.
Studying from an article by medium.com on data privacy. Strangely, there are legitimate reasons why these applications compulsorily ask for access to data. Most of these data is sold to advertisement companies to entice us with their products. Yet as they never disclose it to the religiously honest users.
Apparently, location data is a gem for advertisers. It provides a full context of our habits on and offline. For instance, if you love online shopping, or food bars the advertisers are able to understand your trends and then in future, they will use this data to market coffee to you.
The article notes that personal data can be used in more complex ways. For instance, when visiting someone, they target both persons mutual interests. The advertisers allure you with an advert of a shirt or smart set of things that your friends like and you, the not so money conscious you won’t bother but buy that shirt?
Unbelievably, we have been sponsoring tons of advertising agencies with our data. The same data we ignorantly let access to application manufacturers without a second thought.