CINCINNATI (WKRC) – We live in a time where countless apps on our phones can make our lives easier. But those apps could also make our lives a lot more complicated if we're not careful about our privacy settings.
When you download an app to your phone, the privacy settings are public rather than private. This can give scammers information they can use to trick you. Or, in the case of a data breach at an app company, they may have more of your private information than you think.
This is what it looks like:
Take Venmo, for example. When you download the app, you're automatically put into a public privacy setting. This means anyone on the internet can see who you made a transaction with and what it was for. You may not know this, but Venmo also tracks your location and accesses the pictures in your phone's photo album.
“They’re collecting all this additional data that has nothing to do with the service they’re providing and that doesn’t improve the quality of service in any way,” says Joseph K. Nwankpa, Ph.D., director of cybersecurity initiatives at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business.
What can you do to protect yourself?
You need to be vigilant and not let the app set your privacy preferences for you. Go to privacy settings in the app itself and select your privacy preference. We can use Venmo as an example. Click on the “me” icon at the bottom right. Then click on the mechanical wheel at the top right. Press the privacy tab. The default is public, so anyone on the internet can see your transactions, but there are three options: public, which is the default, friends, and private. Private is the most secure.
You can also go into your phone's settings and scroll down to see all of your apps. You can go through each individual app individually to see what they track or what you're allowed to share with them. Venmo had access to my location and photos, but you can manually change this to turn off data collection.
