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Tell HN: People don't give a sh*t about privacy

3 points by retube ↗ HN
As a recent first-time smartphone owner I've had occasion to research free apps that could help me in some way. Most of the apps I looked at were by all accounts "best-in-class" with endorsements all over the web, social media, installed 100s of 1000s of times and boasting thousands of 5 star ratings.

And i never installed a single one. They all required access to: phone logs, GPS, address book and so on.

The latest was "Hacker's Keyboard". This guy requires address book and, incredibly, HARDWARE - AUDIO RECORDING permissions.

WTF? I'd be literally installing a listening bug on my phone. Yet a great many people don't seem to care.

1 comment

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2close4comfort
To be fair I would say that a lot of people don't care, I guess you could look to Facebook if you would like a directory of them. But I would say that there are those that do care, and increasingly have to go to great lengths to see that their information is kept private. Your phone is a great tool but you do have to keep it in check and even then there are some instances where I simply have to turn my phone off so so I know exactly what it is doing.