{"id":47682,"date":"2012-04-12T17:44:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T15:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=47682"},"modified":"2012-04-12T18:00:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T16:00:34","slug":"placeme-the-privacy-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/columns\/47682-placeme-the-privacy-disaster.html","title":{"rendered":"Placeme: the privacy disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Placeme<\/a> by Alohar<\/a> is a new smartphone app that revolutionises location awareness by gathering huge amounts of contextual data from your device and making sense of it all. Unfortunately it also opens up a world of privacy issues.<\/p>\n

Typically one would set up Placeme on their phone and forget about it. It gathers all the data it can from your device such as; GPS, accelerometer, compass and even WiFi and bluetooth data.<\/p>\n

The data is then sent to their servers and correlated with all kinds of publicly available data such as Google Maps, to produce a very accurate history of your movements. The app could potentially warn you of accidents along routes you frequently travel without you having to ask for it or set up beforehand.<\/p>\n

The obvious concern is; who gets to see where I\u2019ve been? As with many apps, non-personal info will be shared with third parties, such as how many people visit a certain store during a certain period and how long, on average people spend in the store.<\/p>\n

This kind of data sharing is not unusual and does not violate privacy. However, in the Placeme Privacy Policy it states: \u201cWe take your privacy interests very seriously\u201d but then goes on to say things like \u201cthird parties may be supplied with or have direct access to your personal information\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also states that: \u201cWe may release personal information when we believe that doing so is appropriate to comply with the law\u201d. However, in the following video at about the 16:10 mark<\/a>, Placeme inventor Sam Liang implies that personal data is encrypted and that they would need your permission to access it.<\/p>\n