techlineinfo.com

Your Own Cell Phone is Your Biggest Spy

April 9, 2012 | by techlineinfo.com

The amount of development that mankind could summon in years, a few centuries down the memory lane, can now be conjured up in a matter of seconds. Technological enhancement has ensured that quality of life is improving day by day, and the different parts of the world are interconnected like an unbelievably thick global web, which can provide interconnectivity before one could say well, anything.

Smartphone or an Over-Smart Phone?

However, what we should keep in mind is that the harder we press the accelerator on technology, the farther we distance ourselves from privacy. Yes, you might consider your smartphone an invaluable nugget sent from the tech gods, but there is a fine line between a ‘smart’ phone and an ‘over smart’ phone – and trust me, your phone has absolutely no clue what or where that line is. So, when you think that you’re carrying the entire world in your pocket thanks to your cell phone, what you must also consider is that you’ve attached a tracker to yourself as well, which can be used by anyone from your family, your favorite retailer or any law-enforcement agency to trace your whereabouts.

clip_image002

On The Wrong End of Espionage

Similarly, when you use your Facebook account to sign into sites like Foursquare – citing convenience of course – what you’re doing is opening the door of your private life, and the details to the world; and yes, even those details that you thought no one could access. Consider this: the longer your cell phone is tracked, the more information about you is revealed. Yes I know, a spying son of gun indeed! It’s real life espionage, just like the ones you enjoy on your favorite TV shows – except that you’re on the wrong end of the enjoyment this time round.

Double-Edged Sword

This is the reason why the “Girls Around Me” app created such an uproar. It used publically available data via Foursquare and Facebook to make the stalker’s life unbelievably easy. By gift wrapping this information and sending it over to their phone, the app ensured that our dear Mr stalker wouldn’t even have to move his lazy backside and still keep tracks of hotties around him. Hence, herein lies the conundrum: Your cell phones might make interacting with your friends easier, with the help of social networking websites as well of course, but anyone who tracks your cell phone can easily spy on the data exchanges through that phone and on your social networking accounts. That’s a double-edged sword for you if there ever was one!

Police Monitors the Good Guys Too

The police regularly use cell phone tracking to trap the bad guys, but that doesn’t mean that good guys like you lot are safe from that particular gun. The law enforcing authorities keep track on the people the original target interacted with as well. Therefore, if you happen to be the hot dog guy the police suspect bought his last hot dog from, rest assured your smartphone will be probed into thoroughly. It’s not a particularly pleasant thought, but unfortunately that’s what that little beast that you have in your palm half the day, allows them to do. Then there are examples like AT&T’s FamilyMap plan, which allows you to locate all of those people that are on your service plan via A-GPS, and also many other cell phone tracking devices that ensure that your privacy is in jeopardy.

Take Precaution

Therefore, while it’s all good looking for convenience, you must also take precautionary steps like not unifying your accounts and going through the details of an app in detail before downloading it. Or else your life and your world would be an open book. No, I mean literally… with the ‘between the lines’ part pretty much highlighted as well.

RELATED POSTS

View all

view all