App Makers Sharing Sensitive Data With Facebook But Not Telling Consumers
Facebook is keeping hold of sensitive personal data that handset users give completely different mobile apps. This is due to a software tool that instantly shares that info with the social network to enhance ad targeting, as per a media report. It has long been known that applications outside of ecosystem by Facebook can and do enthusiastically share info with the firm to make it simpler to reach new and existing consumers on the platform via ads.
Yet the media report underlines a specifically privacy-violating behavior by fitness and health applications where the data shared can be anything from exercise & diet activities to a consumer’s ovulation cycle and whether they aim to get pregnant. As per the report, app manufacturers such as ovulation tracker Azumio Inc. and Flo Health employ what’s dubbed as “App Events,” a Facebook-offered tool that shares user-submitted & sensitive info squarely with the social network.
On a related note, some users of Apple Inc’s products in China who have generated Apple IDs abroad to avoid a new rule that needs their personal information to be amassed inside China claim that they have been notified by the tech behemoth that they are in danger of losing the information. China on June 1, 2017, rolled out a new cyber safety law that obliges harder controls over information in comparison to the United States and Europe, comprising obligating that firms amass all information inside China and pass safety reviews.
Apple declared in 2017 that it will transfer all user information from iCloud accounts of China to domestic servers operated by GCBD (Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd), which is fraction of a state-supported infrastructure project supervised by officials of local Communist Party. The shift is planned to take place soon and Apple notified users for the move through emails connected to iCloud accounts in China.