NBC Sports.. Really, you too?

For this blog post I looked at two of my apps: NBC Sports Live Extra, a video streaming app, and Tile, a personal item tracking app. The main app I want to talk about is Tile, a company that I assumed would be data farming, but I noticed that NBC’s streaming app asks for a surprising number of permissions. They use location, which is understandable because of content rights, but I don’t know why they would like access to my phone, contacts, or storage. Their privacy policy is fairly straightforward, and they admit it: “Some of our Mobile Apps are supported via advertising, and use third parties to collect data and personalize ads based on your interests and your usage of various apps, web browsing, and other data.” Still, I would have never looked at their privacy policy had it not been for this assignment. Dirty Thieves.

The Tile app seems to have a bit of a reason for its location and storage permissions. It lets me use their services to find my phone or my keys if I ever lose either of them by using GPS tracking of my cellphone, and Bluetooth communication between the small tile, and any other device that has tile software, whether that is someone else’s phone, tablet, or laptop that has the app enabled, or another tile itself.

The unique thing about tile is that it tracks connections between all tile users, thus their data is as much on social networks as it is on individuals. Another aspect to point out is that tile runs all the time on my phone. I still am not sure whether all of these apps are tracking in the background, even when they’re closed. I imagine that is illegal, not because of any privacy reasons, but because phone producers don’t want their batteries to last for short times.

Regardless, I don’t think these apps are invasions of privacy. I know what I’m getting myself into, not because of the terms and conditions, but because of the pop-up permissions window when I download apps. I can’t know from the pop-up whether an app is tracking, but if it has access to something, I assume it is tracking. I could see tracking by apps as stealing, but I could never see it as hacking because there is an accord between the thief and the victim.

Moving to the discussion on leaks, I think it is very hard to say what I would do if I were in the shoes of some of these “Traitors.” I would act in interest of the greater good, but of course, my idea of the greater good can be very different from yours. The only thing that I can say definitively on this topic is that those who leak data that has been collected on an unknowing public should have their case heard in a public court, not in a private or secret tribunal.