What your apps may be doing

There has been a lot of buzz lately about Facebook reading text messages on mobile platforms. As it turns out, a lot of the apps that may be installed on your phone may be doing this exact same thing. When users install an app from their respective marketplace, they need to be aware of the permissions that the app is requesting. On Android, for instance, an app can ask for the permission to read SMS messages. If that same app has full network communication, it could "possibly" be sending all of your messages to a server to be inspected later.

This is not meant to scare anyone into deleting all of their apps from their phone. Take Handcent SMS to the right for example. An app that needs to display and send text messages obviously needs the permissions to do so. If the Hello Kitty app asked for the same permissions, it should throw a red flag. Users just need to be aware of what their apps are actually asking before installing them.

There is a new law in California that requires developers to post a detailed privacy policy discussing what personal information an app needs and what it plans to do with said data. If this policy is not followed, then the developer can face serious prosecutions. This is a step in the right direction and all states should be implementing this law in order to protect the privacy of this digital age.

Until privacy policies become enforced in all states, just use common sense when installing an application, and be wary of third-party sites offering paid applications for free. Developers will often release a different version of their paid app amongst the pirating sites that have different functionality from the regular app, often leaning on the "I will embarrass you for trying to pirate my app." functionality.