You are looking at a map of all the permissions you have given six popular smartphones apps – Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Instagram, Skype and Viber. Instagram can use your camera and microphones to record audio and take pictures and video, without asking you first. Gmail can read and modify your phones contacts. Viber has your precise GPS locations at all times. Facebook can read all your text messages.
“These are permissions that the apps require you to grant them before they are installed,” says Vladan Joler, the data wrangler behind the visualisation and director of the Serbian non-profit SHARE Foundation, which campaigns for internet freedoms. “The purpose of this visual is to show, in a clear way, what smartphones users agree to when they click 'yes' on terms and conditions.”
Read the map from the centre outwards: starting with the application itself, examine the list of permissions each requires, followed by what these permissions really imply, ranked by how intrusive they are. “Even with just these six apps, you are giving away pretty much all the metadata that exists on your phones,” Joler says. “They have permission to access sensitive information such as who you called, when you called them and how long the call lasted.”
His goal is to remind you that every free app makes money by collecting your personal data and creating a profile of you that can be monetised and sold on to third parties. “mobiles phoness have hugely expanded the intimacy and quality of the information they gather,” says Joler.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
