Report: Spies use smartphone apps to track people

San Francisco Chronicle

- ‎28 minutes ago‎

LONDON (AP) - Documents leaked by former NSA contactor Edward Snowden suggest that spy agencies have a powerful ally in the apps installed on smartphones across the globe.

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Report: Spies use smartphone apps to track people

Updated 11:08 am, Monday, January 27, 2014

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LONDON (AP) — Documents leaked by former NSA contactor Edward Snowden suggest that spy agencies have a powerful ally in the apps installed on smartphones across the globe.
The documents, published by The New York Times, the Guardian, and ProPublica, suggest that the mapping, gaming, and social networking apps available on smartphones can feed America's National Security Agency and Britain's GCHQ spy agency with huge amounts of personal data.
Little is known about the scope and scale of the program, but all three publications outlined how data could be harvested from apps such as the Angry Birds game franchise or Google's popular mapping service.
The NSA said Monday it focused on "valid foreign intelligence targets." GCHQ did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
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Report: Spies use smartphone apps to track people

I have always known that this was true about apps. My son told me about this when they first were being programmed and given away and sold. So, basically I don't add apps to my smartphone as a result of knowing about this from the beginning. However, a smartphone is like a window in that literally anyone can look through it worldwide. There really isn't any useful security especially on IPHone's and Androids worldwide. So, literally anything you say or do on an Iphone and Android 100 to 1000 to 1,000,000 people might know about the same moment you do it depending how many people are willing to pay for this information. Also Skype and Line and all such internet worldwide "Free" communications are people's windows into your lives also. Anything that is free on the Internet is suspect as a window into your privacy by hundreds or thousands of people and businesses worldwide.

So, literally anything you say, text or do on your smartphone is vulnerable. This is good to know.

Often people with the right hacking abilities can look through the cameras on your iPhone or Android at any time and hear you talking in a room at any time your smartphone is on. And with some devices they can hear or see you even when the battery is removed when certain types of capacitors have been pre installed that can charge up from your battery to be turned on remotely and used even if your battery to your phone has been removed.