Complicated app settings are a threat to user privacy
Complicated app settings are a threat to user privacy
Knowing you should set your apps’ privacy permissions might not be enough to protect you. A cybersecurity expert explains how complicated privacy settings can trip you up.
It's too bad the author didn't spend any time on the information that smartphone apps are allowed to collect by default, with no in-app settings to restrict them at all.
I'm with him in sentiment, of course: Dark patterns are rotten wherever they're used, including data protection settings. But a discussion of privacy focused on window curtains seems almost pointless when the doors are jammed wide open.
“The problem isn't data protection; the problem is data collection.”
Oh well. I guess every little bit of attention on the issue might help it get fixed some day.
It’s by design
Yes, even the author says so:
These apps intentionally come with complicated default privacy settings that paradoxically make the user’s information more public than private.
Unless the title says so, this is news to me.