Blackeberry Messenger allows users to chare what they are currently listening and watching – but that could also mean porn. Users on Crackberry forum posted a screenshot demonstrating this very vulnerability. The messenger client revealed the user was currently “listening to pornhub.com.”

Blackberry’s default setting does not share videos or songs to the messenger’s status updates, so you have to turn on the “show what I am listening to” feature in order to have an embarrassing porn update slip into your status. Consider yourself warned.

Clueful is a handy webapp that can help you identify what information your apps are collecting. The app was created by the security company  Bitdefender, but was removed by Apple from the app store in July of 2012. Since then, Bitdefender has been offering Clueful as a standalone webapp.

Apple’s app store is known to remove malicious apps, though it seems dubious to select an app that offers something the app store doesn’t – privacy clarity. Unlike Google Play, the app store does not clearly define privacy information for each app. This webapp version of Clueful is the easiest and fastest way to see what kind of data each app is siphoning from your phone.

Apple’s choice to remove the app is disconcerting given the latest privacy controversy with Path and Google. Path was collecting entire address book data from users and storing the information on its servers – all without users’ consent. One user noted that the practice of collecting users’ data was completely antithetical to its stated privacy policy:

What Personal Information Do We Collect? Read more

Facebook is releasing its data to suicide prevention nonprofit, SAVE.org, in hopes of preventing future tragedies. The collaboration resulted from the recent suicide of internet activist, Aaron Schwartz.

About 100 deaths from suicide occur each day in America. Young adults as especially at risk – suicide is the third leading cause of death among those between the ages of 15-24. Likewise, Facebook’s median user age is 22, making the social network a rich source for studies of social behaviors leading up to suicide.

Facebook is not alone in its humanitarian efforts to prevent suicide. Using Google’s search engine to look up information regarding suicide will bring up the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Likewise, Twitter’s public data is available to any researchers wishing to mine information – it’s already being used to track the flu. Read more

Apps that are targeted at children are not doing enough to provide parents with information about what data is being collected about their kids. This is according to a new report from the Federal Trade Commission called “Mobile Apps for Kids: Disclosures Still Not Making the Grade“.

The report found that almost 60 percent of the apps surveyed  are transmitting information from a user’s device back to the app developer or to a third party such as an advertising network. In fact, a small number of third party companies receive information from many of the apps, which the FTC says could result in these companies building detailed profiles about these children.

According to the report, many apps have interactive features like the ability to link to social media or the ability to make in-app purchases, but this information is not disclosed to parents. Read more

Some app or service is always watching you while you’re online, and if that bothers you then you’re not alone. The Pew Research Center has just released a report which indicates that people are more aware of their privacy than some might suspect.

The report is drawn from a Pew survey conducted in late March 2011, where 2,254 Americans were polled by phone. 88% of Americans said they owned a cellphone of some kind, and 43% of that group downloaded apps to their phone, a noticeable increase from the 31% who affirmed this detail in 2011.

More than half of respondents (54%) to this survey indicated that they decided not to install an app once they found out how much personal information they’d have to share with the world. What’s more, 30% of respondents reported removing an app after they discovered how much information it collected.

The survey also showed that 12% of the respondents have had their privacy invaded when someone accessed their phone without permission, and over 30% have had a phone stolen at one point. The youngest owners tended to be more likely to have this happen, with some 45% of the 18-24 age group reporting that their phone had been lost or stolen, and 24% saying that someone else has accessed their phone in a way that compromised their privacy.

You can find the full report, with an extensive set of questions, on the Pew website.

Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission Chairman, said that app privacy needs to be a lot more transparent, speaking at the D10 conference the week. According to CNET, He encouraged app makers to implement simpler policies. ”They have to be like a nutrition guide on the side of a cereal box,” he said.

In a February report called Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures are Disappointing, the FTC  said that privacy disclosures are not keeping pace with the growth of apps and app adoption among kids. The report called for the implementation of more transparent privacy disclosures, as well as information about how user information is being collected.

Here is an excerpt: “Third parties that collect user information through apps also should disclose their privacy practices, whether through a link on the app promotion page, the developers’ disclosures, or another easily accessible method.”