Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Off. Now, I can be hidden amongst the masses that share their every move with the world. As I performed the action of disabling my phones "Location Services ", it had the audacity of giving me a warning which read: "Location services allows Apple and third-party apps and websites to gather and use information based on the current location of your iPhone to provide a variety of location-based services ". Now I appreciate the help, but I expect a certain level of privacy. Just how much info are we sharing via these cellular devices, which seem to be treated more like a bodily extremity versus an electronic device?.
As of January 2014, ninety percent of the American adult population owned a cell phone, and fifty-eight percent of them owned a smart phone (Pew Research Centers). Technological advancements have allowed us to do wonders from these devices that offer a multitude of conveniences, but also provide a rich source of personal information and sometimes without consumer consent. These devices have become an open diary of our lives, where the complexity and ignorance of cell phone privacy allow big companies record-breaking profit margins. The transparency of mobile phone data collection and its usage as we see is far from realistic. All phone activity generates records of our locations, affiliations (via friends, contact lists, and emails), queries, and much more. Just because one cleaned their search history, erased a text/photo, or even closed the application, the data stays lingering in cyberspace. .
Other than phone service providers such as Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T, social media sites, app developers, and marketers are beneficiaries to the whirlwind of our personal information. According to Google's "Our Mobile Planet " tool, the average smart phone has thirty-two apps, and according to the Berkley study forty-two percent of Americans use social services via phone based apps.