A new study reveals smartphone users are more likely to have their privacy compromised.
This week, the society-studying Pew Research Center released a new report on privacy and mobile devices, a subject near and dear to this blogger’s heart. Here’s the good, the bad and the surprising portions…
THE GOOD: Pew found that 43% of cell owners download apps to their phones, up from 31% of cell owners in 2011. The good news is that it seems we’re getting somewhat savvier when it comes to avoiding the info-sucking ones. Over half of the 1,954 phone users surveyed said they’ve put a stake in the heart of info-vampire apps.
54% of app users have decided to not install a cell phone app once they discovered how much personal information they would need to share in order to use it
30% of app users have uninstalled an app that was already on their cell phone because they learned it was collecting personal information that they didn’t wish to share
Good for you, wary ones! Of course, that may lead to app makers being less forthcoming about what information they collect. See this damning piece in TechCrunch about the five design tricks Facebook has employed to get users to pay less attention to what they’re giving up when they add an app.
THE BAD: All the intelligence on a smartphone makes it a more attractive target for snoopers. Smartphone users are more likely to have their privacy invaded than
regular old cellphone users. Via Pew:
Some 15% of smartphone owners say that someone has accessed their phone in a way that made them feel their privacy was invaded, nearly double the 8% of basic phone owners who say this has ever happened to them.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/09/06/sorry-smartphone-owners-but-youre-more-likely-to-have-your-privacy-invaded/
Problems with Pew's mobile privacy study.
The problem is, the survey attempted an apples-to-oranges comparison for each of those findings. Non-smartphones, or feature phones (often called "dumb phones") are a varied lot, including the likes of LG Rumor Reflex with a keyboard and touchscreen interface, and the far simpler Samsung Gusto 2, a clamshell phone with a basic Web browser and a camera, but nothing else beyond regular calling features.
Comparing usage between dumb phone and smartphone users "is pretty idiotic" since "dumb phones don't carry the same features or risks," Rich Mogull, analyst and CEO of independent security research and advisory firm Securosis, told Security Watch in an email.
While the survey questions weren't "terrible," Mogull was not sure if the users in the survey understood the questions to answer them appropriately. "I don't think the conclusions can be used to predict actual behavior," Mogull said.
For example, one of the questions referred to disabling location tracking. While GPS and family locator apps exist for some feature phones, several models have no GPS capabilities all. The way the question was phrased, users would have answered, "No" even if their phone didn't have GPS to begin with.
While most feature phones nowadays have a mobile Web browser, the browsers are often crippled, said Sascha Segan, the lead analyst for mobile at PCMag. Considering that most feature phone owners didn't pick their phones to surf the Web or send email, it's unlikely there would be a privacy reason to regularly clear the browsing history on these phones the way there is on smartphones.
"The browsers are often so poor at Javascript that the only reason you'd delete browser history is if you share the phone with someone and don't want them knowing where you surfed," Segan said.
Again, the way the Pew survey was structured, users would have answered "No" even if they never used the Web browser.
The difference in backup behaviors may boil down to the fact that smartphones have built-in methods to do so. "It isn't anywhere near obvious on many feature phones," Segan said.
Pew acknowledged that some of the "No" answers include users who don't have the capability to perform those tasks on their phones in the first place. "However, part of the reason that these questions were asked of all cell phone owners, and not just smartphone owners, is that previous research of ours has shown that some people are still confused about whether or not they own a smartphone," Mary Madden, Pew's senior research specialist, told Security Watch in an email. Nearly one in ten cell owners are not sure if their phone qualifies as a smartphone, so the questions were designed in "an effort to be conservative and not overestimate the smartphone population," Madden said.
Madden acknowledged that the privacy implications of clearing browsing history and other acts varied between both groups. Addressing the differences was "out of scope" in this report, but will be addressed "in much greater detail in a larger study that we’re planning for next year," Madden said.
The Pew report also noted that smartphone owners were "twice as likely as other cell owners to have experienced someone accessing their phone in a way that made them feel like their privacy had been invaded."
The difference had less to do with user behavior and more about the phone ecosystem. Feature phones are much more secure than smartphones as there are less downloadable apps, and even those apps that exist are much more limited when it comes to affecting user privacy, Segan said.
http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/302447-problems-with-pew-s-mobile-privacy-study
More Americans using mobile Apps in emergencies.
Americans are becoming increasingly reliant on mobile devices during emergencies to provide information, useful tools and a way to let loved ones know they are safe, according to a new survey conducted by the American Red Cross.
Mobile apps now tie social media as the fourth-most popular way to get information in an emergency, following TV, radio and online news. The Red Cross survey found that 20 percent of Americans said they have gotten some kind of emergency information from an app, including emergency apps, those sponsored by news outlets and privately developed apps.
“We’ve monitored more than 100,000 mentions about Hurricane Isaac on social media,” said Wendy Harman, director of social strategy of the Red Cross. “People are stressed out, scared and seeking information. Social media and apps become a way to reach out to them with emotional support and tips on staying safe.”
The survey also identified a subsection of the population deemed “emergency social users,” people who are the most dedicated users of social media during emergencies. These users are likely to take a safety or preparedness action based on the information they see in their social networks. Three out of four of these users say they’ve contacted friends and family to see if they were safe and more than a third say social information has motivated them to gather supplies or seek safe shelter.
Other key findings include:
Emergency social users are also most likely to seek and share information during emergencies. While they look for the hard facts—road closures, damage reports and weather conditions—they share personal information about their safety statuses and how they are feeling.
Three out of four Americans (76 percent) expect help in less than three hours of posting a request on social media, up from 68 percent last year.
Forty percent of those surveyed said they would use social tools to tell others they are safe, up from 24 percent last year.
http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/More-Americans-Using-Mobile-Apps-in-Emergencies