Stealing your Contacts < There's an App for that.

     How much do you care about privacy? What you may not consider private now, may come back to haunt you later.

It has been recently discovered that several social, productivity, convenience, and even game apps have been guilty of uploading address book data. Most of the time users aren't even aware of the share. This information may be safe at a particular company that has good "consumer privacy" thoughts and practices in place. But what about when that company is hacked? Well, for example, when the VA got hacked, thousands of highly sensitive social security numbers were exposed and an unknown amount of digital damage was done.

Say for example, you partake in a multitude of digital software markets and different minor private information is released in each separate activity... If there was private information sharing legal or illegally, all those pieces may fit firmly together to amount to a private bundle of information you may not be comfortable with sharing.

There have been several posts, articles, and even a law in California that go into more detail. The cali law doesn't quite stop the upload of personal information, it just makes the app developers let users know about it in a privacy policy that is specifically released to the user before downloading/installing the app.

So, next time you skim pass a privacy policy... keep in mind, nobody cares about your personal information more than you yourself.

Care to read on...
Seattle Article Stating Specific Apps and what they do

Appolicious Article - Focus on Apple, Google, and Blackberry

Focus on CA's Law

CNN - Mobile Privacy and Kids

King Android?

This is it... we've reached a point where every cell phone (almost) is leaping to get ahead or somewhat near the ever-so-famous iPhone. There's a reason for it. The iPhone is awesome. I'm not going to talk about it anymore.... Although, I am going to talk about Google's first cell phone. Which is seeming like the best alternative to that phone, to me anyways. Its got WiFi, GPS, bluetooth, touch screen, qwerty keyboard stashed underneath, four actual physical buttons, and a track ball. The buttons are great because it doesn't matter what screen your on you still have those dedicated buttons. It will be available the third week of October for $179 through T-mobile. My favorite cell company for texting plans. Head to http://www.google.com/mobile/index.html for information on Google and it's multi-cellular capabilities.

Update: (Oct. 30, 2008) Wal-Mart customers can now buy the handset for a discounted $148.88, for new customers who sign up for a two-year contract.