Some mobile apps can not only keep track of your mobile phone usage track, exact location information, and even the photos in the mobile phone album without your knowledge, but it also has a way to modify or delete it in the background. And this is actually agreed by your tacit consent. Why do all mobile apps want to access your address book?
Obviously, I just wanted to choose a seat for the flight online, but the platform quietly disclosed your name and profile picture. An ordinary browser, in addition to storage, actually needs to open the location and phone permissions, otherwise it will be forced to quit…
These are just open spears, and the more difficult thing to guard against is the dark arrows. Some mobile apps can not only keep track of your mobile phone usage track, exact location information, and even the photos in the mobile phone album without your knowledge, but it also has a way to modify or delete it in the background. And this is actually agreed by your tacit consent.
Why do all mobile apps want to access your address book?
20 mobile apps, 17 want address book permissions
To solve the doubt, the reporter downloaded 20 more commonly used mobile apps, covering social, search, entertainment, travel and other fields, and conducted an evaluation to see to what extent the software’s demand for address book permissions has flooded.
From the authority management interface of the mobile phone, it can be seen that among the 20 commonly used mobile apps tested, 17 mobile apps involve address book permissions, and most of them are just “read contacts”, but Baidu Netdisk, Weibo, Three mobile apps such as WeChat go a step further, and their address book permissions also include “new, modify, and delete contacts”.
These subdivision permissions cannot be closed manually by the user. Once a certain permission is opened, the more details contained in the permission are also defaulted. From the perspective of travel safety, the need for address book permissions is understandable in response to emergencies, but the presence of address books in news apps is a bit confusing.
In 2018, Mr. Liu, a 31-year-old from Benxi, Liaoning, discovered when he registered to use the Toutiao app that he had not been authorized to read his mobile phone address book before, but was recommended to the account of a friend in the address book. Subsequently, Mr. Liu logged in Today’s Toutiao again on a mobile phone with a blank address book. This time, the account of his friend’s address book in the original mobile phone was still successfully recommended to him. Due to unauthorized access to privacy, Mr. Liu felt that it was violated. After that, Mr. Liu filed a complaint and took the headline operator Beijing Bytedance Technology Co., Ltd. to court, demanding that it stop the infringement, apologize, and pay 1 yuan for spiritual damages.
Abuse of authority, only for user portrait
In daily life, I mentioned a certain item by chance, and as a result, I quickly saw the relevant recommendation on the e-commerce platform, whether you have searched it before or not.
In such an era of big data, mastering information means mastering the “gold mine.” This has also caused the mobile APP to obtain more user information, which is no longer based on the necessity of services, but has become a business trend. By continuously labeling users’ social relationships, daily habits and consumption behaviors, the final result is a user portrait of everyone.
Enterprises have user portraits, and all short videos and information streams can reach users in the most accurate way, instead of rounding corners and searching for possible audiences. Of course, it also includes ads customized for you.
At this year’s CCTV 315 gala, APPs such as “Memory Optimization Master”, “Super Clean Master”, “Smart Clean Master”, and “Mobile Manager PRO” were named.
Experts from the Cybersecurity Center of China Electronics Standardization Research Institute conducted monitoring. In a novel reading software, a “safe cleanup” prompt appeared during normal reading. After clicking, the staff downloaded and installed a program called “Memory Optimizer”. “” APP, during the automatic cleaning process, the reminder of “Clean the phone cache” popped up again. After clicking, the phone downloaded and installed the “Super Clean Master” again.
Constantly “remind, download, clean up”, the same path was repeated, and more software was installed on the phone. After testing, it was found that these apps seem to be cleaning up mobile phone junk, but in fact they are constantly stealing information from mobile phones. The staff reminded that these data and information will make user portraits of old people, and label them “easy to be misled and induced” as a group. Some advertisements with deceptive routines will be continuously pushed to mobile phones, causing some elderly people to be deceived.
The unhealthy trend of authority abuse, it’s an instant
In fact, the “Interim Provisions on the Pre-configuration and Distribution Management of Mobile Smart Terminal Application Software” implemented on July 1, 2017 clearly stated that software must not call terminal functions that are not related to the services provided, without express and without user consent, The collection and use of user personal information etc. shall not be implemented.
At the end of 2019, the National Cyber Security Notification Center published the article “Public Security Organs Carry out Software Illegal Collection of Personal Information Centralized Rectification”. The article stated that since November 2019, more than 100 illegal and illegal apps have been investigated and rectified and more than 100 Internet companies operated by them, which are aimed at the phenomenon of APP collecting personal information in violation of laws and regulations.
Today, similar regulations are still escalating. On February 5 this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the list of 26 companies that have illegally called microphones, address books, photo albums and other authorized software companies, and removed 10 models that failed to rectify in time as required. The unhealthy trend of abuse of authority is really time for an instant.
