The fourth thing focuses on digital security through the lens of smartphones. This week , we are asked to read about smartphone security, explore what data the apps on our phones are sharing, and reflect on the result.

What I found

When I started looking at my phone, I expected to see relatively little data sharing. Most of my time on my phone is spent reading (news or articles and blogs to do with my hobbies) or communicating with my family. If I download a new app, I do so from a recognised app store, and I generally try to minimise the amount of data it can access or its’ ability to send notifications.

One thing that surprised me was I only have a handful of apps sharing data. The four travel / accommodation  apps all have access to my location when I am using the app but not otherwise, as does the food delivery app, the messaging app, and the banking app. All of them can access Siri and suggestions (though I have Siri turned off), which I didn’t know, and all of them can send me notifications, which I definitely didn’t know, since I don’t remember ever seeing a notification from any of these apps.

This exercise made me think back to the Digital Literacy workshop I went to at the University of Coventry in January, and specifically to a paper by Dr Daniel Villar-Onrubia. He spoke about tools anyone can use to see how their data, mostly from Facebook, is being used and monetised (a list of these can be found here).

Bonus Thing A

I have now created an about page for this blog.