Most internet users remain ignorant of online data protection issues, Maltese analysts warn as European data privacy campaigners raise concerns over smartphone applications and online privacy.

Phone users’ habit of installing applications without understanding what information they are sharing leaves them exposed

With the dust having hardly settled on European campaigners’ protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement’s online measures, data protection analysts have already flagged smartphones and Google’s latest user privacy policy as areasof concern.

But domestically, debate on such issues remains thin on the ground, with new media academic Toni Sant saying Maltese media and the industry’s use of the internet remained characterised by gross ignorance.

“Users are often unaware of how their online behaviour is being harvested,” Dr Sant argued.

“There are no awareness campaigns and you end up in a situation where people think that whatever they do or say online will or will not remain there.”

It was much the same situation when discussing smartphone usage, said software developer Noel Baldacchino.

“While some users are overwhelmingly preoccupied about privacy issues, others don’t seem to know or care about the way their phone applications work,” he said.

Smartphones’ ever-growing popularity have brought with them a kaleidoscope of applications and games, each demanding access to different pieces of a consumer’s personal information.

Privacy hawks are now warning that phone users’ habit of installing applications without understanding what information they are sharing leaves them exposed to sharing their calling history, SMSs, contact book and more.

A recent investigation by The Sunday Times of London found that companies, including Facebook and Apple, were gaining access to swathes of private data from individuals who agree to the terms and conditions when they download an app.

But according to a poll by this same newspaper, up to 70 per cent of smartphone users never read such terms and conditions, which can be more than 80 pages long.

Google’s new privacy policy, which seeks to group together user data from all its various services, has also attracted the ire of France’s data protection watchdog, which has said it will be investigating the policy for its compliance with EU data protection laws.

The investigation follows EU proposals to revamp data protection laws.

Under the proposals, internet companies such as Google or Facebook would have to ask for users’ permission to sell personal data to advertisers. Users would also be empowered to demand that all their personal information be permanently deleted.

Surveys in the US have shown how privacy-related issues rank highly among smartphone users’ concerns, with over half of all users saying they were “concerned” by location-based app services.

Mr Baldacchino distinguished between the two most popularsmartphone platforms.

While Apple vets prospective applications before launching them into its iPhone app store, Google’s open-source Android platform has no such system in place.

But while the Android system runs each application separately and explicitly lists the services or data each application accesses, Apple’s iPhone system treats all applications as equal and allows them to access many resources by default.

App developers must often walk a delicate tightrope, balancing their need to finance their apps with advertisers’ desire for more accurate profile snapshots of their audience.

“Personally, I don’t use any advertising in my applications, so it’s not a major issue for me. “But you have to be careful – a data privacy slip-up is extremely damaging to a software developer,” Mr Baldacchino said.

Such privacy concerns reflected the changing social dynamic the internet had created, Dr Sant noted.

“We’re seeing the distances between the public, personal, social and intimate spheres of one’s life recede. Nowadays, people announce their plans beforehand and share them with the world over Facebook.”

Social media analyst and Karl Galea agreed. He argued that the notion of privacy was changing.

Maltese case law can already count at least one incident in which an individual’s online behaviour led to legal repercussions in the offline world.

In 2010, a flippant Facebook comment calling for Pope Benedict XVI to be shot in the arms, legs and sides in imitation of Christ’s wounds landed a young man with a €500 fine and suspended sentence.

“That young man clearly saw Facebook as part of his social, rather than public space,” said Dr Sant.

Some basic smartphone privacy tips you can take to cut down on risks

If you have a smartphone and use it to download apps, there’s little you can do to completely lock down your personal information. But there are a number of precautions you can take to ensure minimal risk exposure:

• Only download apps from reputable sources. If you have not heard of an app, read its user reviews. Even better, look it up online and see what has been said about it.

• Opt out of an app’s information sharing capabilities when given the option to.

• Spend some time getting acquainted with your phone’s GPS features. Most smartphones will allow you to control which applications have access to your GPS location. Turn this feature off for all but the most essential of apps.

• On Android: Before you download an app, check its user permissions. This should give you a breakdown of what information the app will access – does a simple game really need access to the contact list?

• For Android: If you’ve opted to root your device, be wary of granting apps root access. Doing so grants them complete control over your phone.

• For iPhone: If your phone is jailbroken, be sure to change its root password. You can find guides online, or else get a trusted technician to do so for you.

• If you find yourself no longer using an app, uninstall it.

• There’s no hard and fast rule, but paid apps tend to pass less data on than free ones. Remember, app developers need to make money somehow!