A lawsuit was filed December 23rd against Apple on Jonathon Lalo’s behalf alleging the company and some of its business partners have violated federal computer fraud statutes. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Apple uses the iPhones and iPads to collect personal information about individual users and passes it on to advertisers. The information is collected and transmitted through the iPhone and iPads unique device identifier (UDID).
Apple denies transmitting information without the user’s permission first. However, the lawsuit claims that information about specific applications being downloaded by certain individuals is the information being given to advertisers. Therefore, it may not be the information within the application, but a lot may be revealed about you just by what applications you are downloading and using. Applications can reveal extremely personal information about a person such as their religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and/or many more.
It is important to remember that our ability to access applications, also gives the creators and transmitters of those applications a certain amount of information about us. As with any other social media, it is important to consider the privacy implications of buying or using certain applications.
