While apps may cost only a few dollars and many are free, users are increasingly required to “pay” with personal information. This can include email addresses, current location, work history, birthdays — even sexual preferences, and religious and political affiliations. Moreover, some apps require users to disclose the personal information of their friends as well.
App developers are compiling large databases of user information to be used by advertisers, app makers and other unspecified users — which are often not disclosed.
While Facebook requires apps to ask for permission before accessing personal information, that does not always happen. And Facebook does not always enforce their own privacy rules.
Interestingly, apps that frequently ask for permission are disregarded by users as they get increasingly accustomed to the alerts.
“Up until a few years ago, such vast and easily accessible repositories of personal information were all but nonexistent. Their advent is driving a profound debate over the definition of privacy in an era when most people now carry information-transmitting devices with them all the time,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
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