With iOS and Droid systems getting the entire spotlight, you may not have noticed a new phone peak up from the clouds: a Windows phone. Windows has been trying to branch into the market for quite some time and finally made their mark with the Windows Nokia phones, with 710 available in stores now, and the 810 and 900 models to be followed soon after. The phone has received positive praise for its seamless operation, user-friendly platform and colorful apps. But just like any new phone, how do we know that what we download is safe and adhering to the privacy policies?
Last fall, Microsoft was under scrutiny that they had unintended behavior on their location services. For example, when using certain parts of the phone, it asked you to set your location. Microsoft was accused of tracking Windows phone locations without collecting consent or giving a reason for using this information. Your options were Allow or Cancel, which obviously, cancelling would just exit you from the application. Users were frustrated that they had to give out their location and have their phones tracked without ever agreeing to the tracking in the first place.
At this time, Windows adjusted their privacy policy and admitted the issues. But now there has been some speculation over how safe the applications are. With Windows not really wanting to take on the role of monitoring privacy policies, the company is looking to hire a third party organization to keep tabs on this information. The challenging part to mobile phone privacy is that the accountability is unclear.
Congress is working hard to have better online privacy for computer users, but when it comes to mobile phone apps, many of these privacy policies are overlooked or simply ignored by developers. So yes, most mobile phone users are tracked and information collected, providing they are using the apps and having their location set. Since accountability is unclear, it’s easy to overlook privacy policies and still continue collecting information for the benefit of third party companies.
Windows is not exempt from this issue, as all phones deal with privacy policies. Fortunately, Windows and Apple have the same approach of having strict privacy policies in place that apps must adhere to before they are approved, unlike Google that has some defined policies, but generally wait until a problem is reported before they pull the application.
Image Source: en.wikipedia.org
