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Privacy Concerns Raised Over US Presidential Election Mobile Apps
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The Obama for America and Mitt's VP smartphone applications that were recently released for the US Presidential elections were found to have a number of significant privacy issues that went unnoticed by users who did not read the terms of service agreements before using either application.
According to analysis by GFI Software, in order to use the Romney campaign's app, users had to sign in through their Facebook account or to provide personally identifiable information such as their name, email and home address. Users who opted to sign in through Facebook gave the app permission to post on their profile page on their behalf and to collect even more data from their Facebook friends. The application was also found to collect other information such as the device ID, carrier and phone number as well as GPS and cell locations.
The Obama campaign's application required users to allow the app to gather information such as GPS location as well as the names and phone numbers found in the user's contact list, call and message logs, data on other installed apps and the contents of the phone's SD card if present. The user was then presented with information on registered voters in the area before being encouraged to canvass the neighborhood on behalf of the campaign. The stipulations required by each application should be considered against privacy concerns before a user chooses to continue the install.
"While issues with mobile security are a relatively new phenomenon, it does not mean that there are not already a large number of security pitfalls that users should avoid," said Christopher Boyd, senior threat researcher at GFI Software. "However, as we saw this month, even legitimate mobile applications can pose a threat to privacy if users do not investigate before granting permissions to gather data."
Tags: [mobile apps] [USA]
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