A portable, personal spy

The millions of people who use their cellphones daily to play games, download applications and browse the Web may not realize that they have an unseen companion: advertisers that can track their interests, their habits and even their location.

Advertisers already tailor ads for small groups of consumers on the Web based on personal information. But cellphones have a much higher potential for personalized advertising, especially when they use applications like Yelp or Urbanspoon with GPS to identify a person’s location, right down to the street corner where they are standing.

The capability for collecting information has alarmed privacy advocates.

“It’s potentially a portable, personal spy,” said Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who will appear before Federal Trade Commission staff members this month to brief them on privacy and mobile marketing. He is particularly concerned about data breaches, advertisers’ access to sensitive health or financial information, and a lack of transparency about how advertisers are collecting data. “Users are going to be inclined to say, sure, what’s harmful about a click, not realizing that they’ve consented to give up their information.”
It’s not just behavior, but also data about income, or even whether you have children, that mobile advertisers consider.
Advertising systems can track not only the location of the phone, but also that person’s travel pattern: uptown New York to Nob Hill in San Francisco, for instance.

“People should be allowed to trade most kinds of information for value as long as the terms are fair,” he said. “They’re not fair now.” ~ agreed!

And what are the "fair terms"? 90% of the mobile users reading this post would not even worry about this? Am I right?

Source: NYTimes