Curses! Foiled by Smart Devices and Fiendishly Clever Search Engines — Again!
My moment of triumph over the phone monopoly had arrived. I’d show them. Stodgy old feature phone in hand, I burst through the doors of the Verizon Wireless store and slammed the device on the counter. “The damned thing has been broken all day and I can’t call out — what can you do about it?”
The youthful service rep studied my phone from a safe distance, as one would any dinosaur, then bravely picked it up and placed a test call. “Works fine,” he said, “Let me see you try.” I did. Same problem as before. “Aha! What did I tell you?!” I snorted. The rep just smiled. “Sir, you’re pushing the wrong button.”
I knew that (not). Okay, so I’m probably not ready for a smart phone and may never be. Even relatively low IQ feature phones bedevil me at times. Ineptitude aside, I have a valid reason for sticking with my clunky feature phone, even if doing so subjects me to the sneers of the over-educated, under-employed, 4 roommate-per-dwelling-unit Millennial snots who staff and/or habituate tech stores. I refer to privacy concerns which pose a threat to the public — and a PR UXB (unexploded bomb) waiting to detonate beneath their instigators: Apple and Google.
Unless you’ve slept under a log the last year, you should recall last April’s “Invasiongate,” wherein British researchers revealed that iPhones and many iPads contain a file that tracks the user’s precise geographic coordinates, adding a time stamp so that someone — who?, one wonders — can see exactly where you’ve been and when you’ve been there. Further, when either device is sync’d up with an Apple computer, the location data is transferred.
At the time, Android users hooted that their smart phones didn’t subject users to the same location snooping. But now Android customers — and for that matter, anyone who uses Google services — can no longer feel superior to Apple where privacy matters are concerned.
As of this week, Google has changed its privacy policies so that the company can track users as they move across Google’s web sites, including the main search engine, Gmail and YouTube. Google stressed that the change only applies to customers who are signed on to their Google accounts, which seems obvious enough. Here’s the catch: Customers who use Google’s Android OS for their smart phones and tablets are always signed on. Otherwise the devices would not work as intended — you can hardly use the smart features of your Android-powered phone without first logging in, right?
Net net, Google now will be able to track what Android users do on the phone, and blend that data with what it already knows about these customers from their visits to Google sites.
As usual, Google justifies its action in the name of better understanding its users, providing a superior experience, and not incidentally, adding to its power to build exquisitely detailed customer profiles, the better to sell targeted advertising. Some customers might squawk over the inability to opt out. After all, many use their smart phones in both their business and personal lives. As of now, though, Google won’t distinguish between the two. They “got ya” and they “know all about ya” — whether you like it or not.
For whatever reason — apathy maybe — the above violations of personal privacy are no big deal to most iPhone and Android users. To date, few other than journalists and those who monitor privacy issues have paid any mind to mobile location data caching or Google’s quest to be the Web’s version of the almighty Eye in The Sky. Giving Google a free pass is something of a habit. Two years ago, when bloggers caught Google gobbling Wi-Fi network names as its vehicles roamed the world snapping Street View photos, hardly a soul complained, even when Google snatched up user names and passwords.
How long will it be before Apple and Google wear out their welcome in our personal lives? At some point it’s just possible that either or both companies will cross the line and commit some privacy blunder that alienates even the most ardent fans. Remember the uproar over the U.S. Department of Transportation’s airport scanners that produced “clothes-less” views of airline passengers at security checkpoints? Something similar could happen to everyone’s favorite pair of tech companies, too, depending on just how far and hard they’re willing to push.
I’m not waiting for that day. To me, the app has not yet been invented that makes it worthwhile to give any company or anyone “Peeping Tom” status in the lives and businesses of others. I’ve already opted out.
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