Smartphone privacy has become a major issue for many advocates, and the two apps being pushed by the nation's top political parties could pose problems for users on both sides of the aisle.
The Republicans' recently-unveiled Tampa '12 app came embedded with fine print that stated the program could call anyone on the user's contact list without authorization, according to a report from the
Chicago Sun-Times. Meanwhile, the Democrats' DNC 2012 app is able to collect all images the phone's camera can see, and also asks permission to track users' location data.
Further, the popular Obama For America app comes with code that allows it to prevent the phone from going into sleep mode, the report said. Meanwhile Mitt Romney's well-known Mitt's VP app that revealed his running mate mined users' phones for all their personal data.
Eduard Goodman, the chief privacy officer for
Identity Theft 911, has a blog about the potential problems consumers face when downloading any type of app, and possibly giving developers access to sensitive information.
© 2003-2012 IDentity Theft 911, LLC. All Rights Reserved