If you pay little attention to apps permissions when you install them on your smartphone, chances are you don’t know what those apps know about you and, most importantly, the information they transmit about you. Last year, we witnessed several huge leaking scandals that involved Android and iOS applications blatantly leaking user data on a large scale basis. Path uploaded entire users address books to its servers while Brewster and Security Flaw exposed users’ personal data online. Even some celebrities got exposed through their mobile apps.
Developers request extensive privileges for their apps not because the apps need those permissions to function, but just because there is no regulation that would forbid the developers from requesting permissions that are not necessary for the app’s purpose. Plenty of mobile applications, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, to name a few, poke their noses into your contact and private information, and of course they say they do not abuse of that information. But the fact that they aggregate your personal data is perfectly clear stated in their Privacy Policies.
Mobilescope is a smart application, which lets you find out exactly what information is accessed by particular applications and where that information is being transmitted. This application shows you the logs of your personal data that are being transmitted by the applications from your smartphone. In addition, this application allows you to set up custom alerts. For example, if you want to track specific piece of information, such as your phone number or email address, you can set the application to notify you whenever that data is being transmitted.
What Mobilescope does is it roots your entire device’s Internet traffic through its own server to analyze and report back to you. You will be surprised how much information about you is being siphoned to multiple third parties through applications you would never suspect of such infringing activities.
Mobilescope has been acquired by Evidon, and we have yet to see on the app updates. In my humble opinion, this application is a must-have in the totally insecure mobile environment compromised by the applications we use.
