BlackBerry Priv users are more secure than others with help from BlackBerry’s DTEK app. In times when social media feeds are filled with photos of friends, acquaintances and family, mobile devices may be blurring the lines between privacy and sharing a bit too much, the Canadian firm says in a blog post.
Privacy: just a word now
Mobile devices allow us to take advantage of sharing (which is great), but one has to be careful when sharing on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Social media sites may be accessing our devices’ microphones, cameras, GPS and other features more than we realize, according to security researchers and users’ reports.
“And a lot of people are uncomfortable with what they believe is an invasion of their privacy,” BlackBerry says.
A Florida TV station reported recently that Facebook is listening to users’ conversations using their phones’ microphones and then serves up ads relating to what they talk about. After the story exploded on social media, the social networking giant published a statement saying it does not listen to conversations for the purpose of selling ads, but it agreed that it uses the microphones on users’ smartphones.
Last year, Netflix requested access to devices’ microphones, shocking many who wondered why a streaming service would want access to them. In answer, the streaming giant said it only wanted to allow users to call customer service from their tablets.
One should be aware that their smartphone’s camera geotags every picture they take. Your location is being tracked anywhere you take your phone, thanks to Google Fit on Android and Apple Health in the iPhone, the blog post says.
Many already know that their movement is being tracked by their fitness and mapping apps, but there are many other apps that are accessing GPS data for no reason. Many popular apps, including screen-lock app GO Locker and the word game Words With Friends, want access to your precise location data to serve personalized ads or enable certain app functionality, the blog post reads.
BlackBerry DTEK: an efficient tool to maintain privacy
If you are concerned about someone spying via your social media apps, then BlackBerry suggests that you dive into your smartphone’s settings to make some adjustments. The DTEK app by BlackBerry for Android gives Priv users a better way to control the apps which are accessing their smartphone’s features.
BlackBerry’s DTEK tracks the apps and notifies a user when an app is sending a text message, turning the microphone on, accessing the camera, or accessing the location or contacts. With this app, a user can also check and see when, for how long, and from where the access happened. Also one can turn off feature permissions directly within the DTEK security monitoring app.
