The FaceApp has our photos and the ability to predict what we’ll look like over the course of our lives. Our hotel check-in apps show our travel destinations, room preferences, and upcoming stays. This might not seem like a big deal, but all of this data could be allowing other nations to attack the security of citizens through geotargeting, facial recognition, and pattern projection. A smartphone has the potential to be a more useful weapon than a missile.
According to NPR (National Public Radio in the US), some foreign nations, such as Saudi Arabia, use information shared across apps to identify dissidents and potential spies or to hack into computers. Additionally, the data collected through apps can be used to create psychographic models – groupings of people based on their shared psychological characteristics – that are deployed in disinformation campaigns.
Apps such as the wildly popular TikTok are particularly vulnerable. Owned by a Chinese company, TikTok utilises an algorithm that can be tuned to distribute news or content that sways public opinion – a form of information control that has a proven societal impact. And China’s 2017 national intelligence law contains language that requires companies to comply with intelligence-gathering operations if asked.
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