Apple sued over transmission of personal information by mobile apps
December 29, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Credit WJS blog
Last week on December 23rd, a lawsuit was filed against Apple for allowing the transfer of personal information through third party iPhone and iPad applications to advertising networks without the consent of the owners of the mobile devices. The complaint was filed by a Jonathan Lalo in a San Jose, California federal court according to reports from Bloomberg.
According to Mr. Lalo’s lawsuit, Apple’s mobile devices are equipped with “identifying devices” that allow advertising networks to track how users use available applications on their devices, which applications, and for how long. The lawsuit further claims that:
“Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views”.
Earlier in the month, the Wall Street Journal had also released reports relaying the prevalence of the information some applications are tracking and transmitting about their users. The WSJ had tested 101 applications for the occurrence of information tracking and transmission. What quickly became concerning was how many of the top, most popular apps fall into this category. (For a more detailed breakdown of the apps in question, see the WSJ blog.)
Apple’s social responsibility nightmare
May 24, 2010 § 1 Comment
Sun Danyong committed suicide last year. (Photo credit: Brisbane Times)
Apple is making the headlines again lately, and this time, it’s not with good news. Foxconn, a major electronics manufacturer that assembles Apple’s iPhones and iPads, has seen yet another employee suicide: the eleventh suicide attempt in the last year, and ninth successful one. Nan Gang, a 21-year old employee of the company, died after jumping off the four-storey building. But wait – this isn’t new. We’ve seen this before. The question is why is it still happening, and happening so frequently.
Social responsibility meets social technology.
March 21, 2010 § Leave a Comment
What happens when you combine volunteerism, opportunity and technology? A brand new iPhone app created by VolunteerMatch and imc². Not only does the app present a convenient, easy way to find volunteer opportunities from a network of over 70,000 participating nonprofit organizations, it’s being offered free.
Having just downloaded the app, I have to admit, I had some doubts initially. I had a hard time imagining how an app of this nature could function in a way that would engage me and hold my attention, and even add useful assistance in my everyday life.
Yes, I’m committed to volunteerism, but will you, dear app, really be different than websites and volunteer forums? The answer is a resounding yes. The app is intuitive and easy to navigate. Search results are abundant and can be filtered according to location, skill-base, keyword, or area of interest. It was a great call to allow search without forcing the user to register for an account or login first. It also links up fairly seamlessly with Facebook and Twitter if someone wants to share an opportunity with a friend or acquaintance – although you need to pre-sign-in through the “Options” section, which isn’t always apparant at first glance.
I think the only thing that is yet to be seen is how useful this app will be outside of the United States. I have to admit to being a little skeptical about whether I would actually surface any results in Toronto. So, when three location-based results appeared, in a way, I was pleasantly suprised. That said, it’s still only three for the whole of the Greater Toronto Area. Of course, there is always the option to include all virtual opportunities (I received two hundred postings), which admittedly suprised me. However, the user still needs to carefully filter through them. I seemed to get a lot of “virtual” opportunities that obviously needed me to be on location.
However, the potential is tremendous and this is only the tip of the iceberg. A really interesting app – one I’ll definitely be keeping on my phone.
Find out more or download the VolunteerMatch iPhone app.
