Monday, December 15, 2014

CNIL alert on geolocation applications for smartphones – France Info

A study by the CNIL and INRIA shows that some applications on smartphones utilize geolocation almost permanently. An application accesses eg several times per minute.

And if we géolocalisaient apps excessive? The National Information Commission (CNIL) and Freedoms and the National Institute for Research in Computer and Control (INRIA) warn that in a study published Monday. Tracking of smartphone users is often not justified. Between a quarter and a third of the applications downloaded iOS and Android have access to geolocation according to the study, which lasted three months. This figure is not surprising for the connoisseur but “ Frequency intensity ” geolocation is.
One of the applications, the name does is not disclosed, for example, access to geolocation three months over a million times “ This averages nearly a minute access ,” note the authors of the study, have added “ difficulty attaching to this application features .”

A resold Data

Geoffrey Delcroix, responsible for studies at the CNIL, believes that tracking can be from a “ bad optimization application commands “. But it can also result from a desire to “ monetize this data for advertising purposes by third parties “.
The authors of the study believe that the location data are probably sold to third parties. “ It is well known that the location data has tremendous value for professionals in the marketing and advertising so we imagine that it participates in the economic model applications “. He adds that “ some free applications will massively shift the location of their users for advertising third party will be able to use it to advertise in another context, in another application or in the mobile navigation “.

“Smartphones are like black boxes that function by themselves” (Geoffrey Delcroix Research fellow at the CNIL meets Julien Moch)

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