Do you download apps with abandon? Many of us do! Here at mobilesecurity.com we recommend that you think carefully before downloading an app—why are you downloading it? What is it supposed to do? Do the permissions match the purpose? Mark Kanok, contributor to mobilesecurity.com, walks us through the thought process.
When you're downloading and installing apps, our recommendation is always to think about why are you downloading this app, what is this app supposed to do, and do the permissions requested make sense for this kind of app? And a good example of this is a tip calculator. Now most tip calculators are pretty straightforward.
You just punch in what the bill is. And you say, this is good service or bad service. And it'll automatically calculate the tip.
It should just be basic math. And there probably aren't too many permissions required. But maybe it's an international tip calculator, which actually uses your location to determine, OK, maybe in the West Coast people generally tip 15% to 20%. Maybe on the East Coast it's 10% to 15%.
Or maybe it's different by some of the different countries you might be in. So it knows your in France. There's different tipping policies there, versus Australia, versus Japan. So if it can tell your location, there might be different conditions that applies to the tip that's calculated.
So there are different questions to start arising as you determine do I think this app is safe? Should it have access to my location? Should it have access to the ability to text message me or not?
Sometimes they're reminder texts that it might send. Other times there might be things that actually are trying to run up charges, because they're actually fake apps. They're running up charges on your phone bill, which you won't see until maybe 30 days later when you actually get your phone bill.