Sunday, August 26, 2012

Are political apps invading your privacy? - FOX19.com-Cincinnati ...

(CNN) - Mobile political apps from both the Obama and Romney campaigns are helping voters keep track of their favorite candidate. The apps keep people informed about everything from Romney's VP pick to various campaign events they can be involved in.

But, privacy experts said there are many security concerns with these apps.

The Romney campaign's app, which allows users to sign in through Facebook, can mine information from the user's friends on the site.

The Obama campaign app provides data to help volunteers canvass. The app plants blue flags at the homes of registered democrats.

It's not just maps that these apps can access. Privacy expert Justin Brookman said a lot of information gets out after it has been downloaded.

"Contact lists, friends, telephone numbers?anything you do with your phone is designed to be exposed to the applications that you download, so whatever on there they think might be valuable, as far as data mining, as far as figuring out how to tailor a message to you, as far as figuring out who's going to give the most money, they have the ability to get. A lot of it you can't say ?no' to," he said.

While the Romney campaign declined to comment the Obama campaign said, "This campaign has always and will continue to take great care with the information that people share with us. In this instance, all of the information available comes from publicly available data and the campaign can take legal action against anyone misusing this public data."

Copyright 2012 CNN. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.fox19.com/story/19378468/are-political-apps-invading-your-privacy

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