There was an article on CNN I wanted to read and I was prompted with the picture attached to this article – can’t read the article unless you install their app. I’ve been seeing this more and more often, and some apps are innocuous and some are downright evil. Even those apps – such as the CNN app – that don’t overreach their permissions now, once you get used to it they start adding permission requirements and people downplay it as necessary for a new feature.
ATM’s used to be free, but what happened once it became mainstream? Fees got larger and larger until now it’s just part of life. It’s not paranoia, it happens all the time.
With the death of Net Neutrality we can expect providers to push their apps on users more and more often and if that site has a corporate affiliation with, say, Apple, then Android apps won’t work properly or have the latest features. Why would they? That’s not where the money is and developers’ time is finite. They code towards where the money is, and it’s not from you and me. They don’t get cash from users, by installing their app they spy on the articles you read, what you’re interested in and push advertisements that are, for some reason, right up your alley.
The answer? Don’t bother, you don’t have to install anything. I pulled up www.duckduckgo.com and searched for what the article was supposed to be about and found a number of other sites talking about the same subject so I read it from there instead. Apps installed on your phone provide the source with a phenomenal amount of information about you – resist the urge to install another app and go get what you need without it.