Smartphone applications designed for children allow the companies that produce them to harvest information about youngsters’ movements, their photographs and even who they are talking to.
Small print in the terms and conditions that users must agree when downloading the apps delivers permission to access potentially sensitive details about their lives, interests and friends.
The Sunday Times examined the top 200 apps for children available for Google’s Android smartphone and found the terms and conditions of more than 170 provided the right to access some level of information stored on the handset.
This comes amid concern about the data collected by companies online which can, for example, be used to target advertisements at internet users. Last week it emerged that the app for Twitter, the social networking site, had been secretly gathering the address books of some users.
Source: Internet (Robin Henry, The Times)
