I gave you my permission?
When you download apps you are granting permissions to the sites. Many of us don't read the small print and have no idea what is attached to our profiles. Read this post by Rene Fabre and you may want to make some changes.
I’m a guy that likes to try stuff out... I’m not usually first, but early and if I hear about an app or a website that looks like it might help me to get things done I’ll try it out. That said, over the past 2 years I’ve downloaded a lot of apps for my iPhone 6 Plus. I tried them out, then later decided many weren't for me and deleted them.
This is especially true for me with photo, video, and productivity apps... I used Evernote for a while, but it was a resource hog so I deleted it. I had an American Express card because of COSTCO, but earlier this year they got divorced. So I canceled the card and deleted their app.
Some apps simply changed like Foursquare. When they separated out the checkin function and called it it Swarm, that wrecked the user experience for me, so I stopped using it then deleted it off my phone.
Every time you download and install an app you click “agree” and grant permissions. Of course 99% of us never read all the fine print and simply click agree because a friend, relative, or coworker is using it and you want it too. You’re willing to trade some privacy for what it does, and gee gosh anyways these other apps already know this stuff about me, so I guess it’s alright if you do too.
The thing is if you agreed an app can see your Gmail, push notifications, post on your behalf, connect to your profile on various platforms, and know your GPS location, that didn’t necessarily go away when the app disappears from your screen. It may still be on your device and use the permissions you granted.
Don’t freak! As my little detective story unfolded I remembered a very handy website... MyPermissions.org ... This service allows you to turn rights on and off that were granted to the app and its use of your data, or simply disconnect it altogether.
Long story short... I found Facebook had several apps installed I wasn’t even aware of that had access to my profile. Twitter apps that had access to my Linkedin data, several others were connected to my Gmail. All in all I had around 380 apps all looking at my iPhone, each other, and my data. Wow (an understatement) this was quite an eye opener!
MyPermissions has Android and iOS apps for your phones and tablets and you can also use it from your computer by going to MyPermissions.org and run the free scan...
One small bit of advice... Don’t go blasting apps away until you’re sure of what they do. When you use apps like Instagram or Hootsuite that allow you to post from one place to several others at a time and you use them to do just that, remember there’s an app for that! :O)
I simply did a Google search and used “what is: app-name” to figure out what it does, where it’s from, and what data it wants to track.
MyPermissions only takes about 2 minutes to do a scan and then you can either alter rights or delete the app with no catch. Note the right column next to each app name is where you turn the rights on or off, and/or click the circle on the left and delete it altogether. You’ll find pretty much any question you’d ever ask about it answered on the MyPermission/FAQ page.
René Fabre
"Where there's conversation, there's opportunity." Please Note - The views expressed herein reflect only the individual’s personal views and are not the views of the author’s employer.
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