Mobile apps' “appetite” grows for users' private data. Attentive owners of Android may have noticed Twitter’s update request to gain access to SMS and phone status.
Previously similar attempts to access SMS have been already observed by Facebook, Viber, Hangouts and Telegram. They would explain such a move with making it easier for users to enter the activation code. But it gets more difficult to explain this strange desire to access the status of you phone calls. Why would Twitter what to know when and who’s calling?
Naturally comes the next question - what lies behind such a request? Perhaps people are so used to the idea of total surveillance, that such an invasion of their private data no longer needs any explanation.
This may suggest that scandalous revelations of Snowden 's espionage activities have had an unexpected effect. Shocked citizens have accepted the inevitable and ubiquitous surveillance from the secret services, that now seem to take for granted similar attempts from powerful corporations. As a result, corporations are getting a new stream of income, monetising all the collected data by selling it to unknown third parties.
