Is your app snooping on you?

IN NOVEMBER 2018, a woman in Shanghai talked with her friend about a certain milk tea brand, and when she opened Eleme, a fast food delivery app on her smartphone, she found it recommended that brand at the top. A media investigation suggests that several similar apps might obtain users' preferences via their phones' microphone. Liu Quan, a senior researcher on network security at the China Center for Information Industry Development, comments:

Some media outlets have used "surveillance" to describe the incident, yet the companies that developed and run the apps deny this is what they are doing. Yet it is quite easy for apps to conduct such "snooping".

The majority of the apps require the user's permission to use microphone in order to run on a smartphone. As long as the user allows the app to use the "microphone" when asked for permission during the installation of an app, the app will be able to use it even when the app itself is not active. In other words, when you chat with friends, the app you are using may record your conversations. These are analyzed so they can be commercialized.