It doesn’t matter how many different products we offer to try and protect our customers there always seems to be something new on the horizon to infiltrate people’s privacy.
We are constantly amazed by the number of customers who come in looking for telephone encryption devices to make sure that no one is snooping on them. Many people also now keep their credit cards in RFID wallets http://www.spycatcheronline.co.uk/rfid-men-s-wallet.html to prevent their credit cards from being scanned and cloned. Credit card cloning has become a serious problem over recent years and members of the public are just getting wise to the fact that an RFID wallet offers total protection against this form of theft.
As software has become more sophisticated it has become quite easy to download a program on to an individual’s cellular phone that will allow someone to dial in to that phone and listen covertly, or even record, conversations that are taking place within range of the cellular phone’s microphone. One of the only ways to protect against this is to keep your phone inside an RFID phone case: http://www.spycatcheronline.co.uk/cellular-phone-case-with-spyphone-protection.html which will completely block the phone from making or receiving calls thereby rendering the spy software that has been installed harmless.
Now we are hearing of a new problem. Have you ever wondered how companies can afford to spend months developing new apps for cellular phones and then offer them to consumers for nothing? Well here’s the answer. It turns out that a number of the flashlight apps that you can download for free secretly gather an incredible amount of information including where the phone is, details of who owns the phone together with their contacts and even the content of text messages. Here is where the company who has developed the app can make money because a lot of this information can then be transmitted to research companies and marketing companies to track users shopping habits. It is fair to assume that these companies pay to get access to this information.
One fear is that criminal gangs may be involved in developing apps similar to this which could give them access to users’ bank details.
Tens of millions of these flashlight apps have been downloaded and up until now hardly anyone has been aware of how dangerous this could prove to be. Very often the terms and conditions that the consumer agrees to does state that information may be passed on to third parties but very few people scrutinize terms and conditions carefully enough that they would be likely to spot this. This problem does not apply to the Iphone where the flashlight facility is already built in when you buy it.
This problem is already being investigated by agencies, both in the United States and in the UK, and you are likely to hear a lot more about it in coming months.
