Mobile Applications: Issue 1: Misuse of mobile apps

Showing posts with label Issue 1: Misuse of mobile apps. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Crooks misusing police mobile apps

Mobile phone applications are convenient tools for people to complete different tasks. Besides, it’s easy to install and use when you have a smartphone. In India, the police of Tumakuru had launched a mobile app to the public so people can use this app to report incidents online and get responses immediately. Although it brings benefit to the public but still have some criminal use the police app to hack people’s bank account by entering their phone number in the police app make a false report and get the victim duplicate SIM so the victim would not receive any alert message of money transaction. Therefore the victim money was transferred to the criminal account without and notice. There are some people misuse the mobile apps for crime action when it’s convenient to all users. To solve this issue the police department must discuss with the technical team to improve the app secure. (Gowhar, 2016)

British mobile phone users’ movements 'could be sold for profit’

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Cybercrime use the hacker apps to hack public information and sell it for profit also an issue of misuse mobile apps. The cybercrime also use those information to blackmail people. Some of the mobile apps have location tracking function to provide the user details so the criminal will create the societal problem for instance kidnapping, swindle case and others. The solution of this issue are people close their location tracking function apps and not using the public WIFI to download any apps or register something that use personal details. Besides, mobile company should make contracts available before the point of sale and marketing to let people know what data had been collected and who will be shared with it so the violate personal privacy issues will be lessen. (Gayle, 2016)

Mobile Spying

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Mobile spying applications are designed for the purpose of child and employee monitoring, but sometimes the purpose extend beyond that. After buying the application, a link is given to be downloaded in the target phone or tablet. When it finishes downloading, the app disappears and works in complete stealth mode without leaving trace behind (Souza, 2016). The user then need to sign into online user account with username and password given by the company. The list of activities that can be monitored are in the article. It could be a law offense if one install monitoring software onto phone which he/she do not own or have proper authorization to install it. A person (over 18 years old) who is being monitored need to be notified or else the user is consider violated the laws. It may be legal for parents to monitor their children through spy app, but ethically it is wrong to monitor them without their consent. One way to eliminate this option is to open a honest, friendly and fair conversation with their children. As for organisation, it can win employee’s hearts if trust is given to them. When their conscience is in charge, it may increase the engagement in productivity.

Misuse Of Mobile App Configurations

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A Gartner analyst foresee that misconfiguration of mobile applications could produce 75% of mobile security breaches by next year. Instead of technical attacks on mobile devices, data are leaked when the organization are not aware of the misuse of personal cloud services. The cloud service apps in mobiles devices and tablets which used to convey enterprise data may lead to data breaches. Confidential data could be stolen, viewed and used by unknown authority.

With the increasing usage of smartphones and tablets, enterprises are advised to adopt Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy and app shielding to protect confidential data (Varmosi, 2014)

How to get an App Store refund for kids' accidental in-app purchases

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In app-purchases have become a thorny issues for customers in Apple’s ecosystem. According to the United States Federal Trade Commission, in-app purchases are made without the knowledge of their parents. Hence, Apple made it easier for the users to recoup the money without any paper works and forms. The users only need to find the receipts from email or iTunes and submit a refund request. To avoid this to happen again, Apple had created few options to make it harder for kids to accidentally make in-app purchases such as it requires password to access (Moren, 2016).

Read more here: http://www.macworld.com/article/2140066/how-to-get-an-app-store-refund-for-kids-accidental-in-app-purchases.html

By: Lau Jing Qi

Internet: Thin line between use and misuse

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There is a thin line between use and misuse mobile application as parents often gift their children with communication gadgets to assuage their guilt of spending less time with their children, but they would not understand that this will lead to the misuse of mobile application by their children as they lack of guidance when access through it such as pornography and scam. To create awareness, schools had organized workshops for children and parents regarding the basic precautions. The only solutions for parents to prevent this, they need to explain things from young age and dissuade them from watching objectionable content. Parents should be role model to their child (Nair, 2016).

By: Lau Jing Qi

5 Epic Ways We Misuse Mobile Technology

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The five ways of misuse mobile technology are politicians watch explicit materials in parliament,

people see people’s head and outstretch Ipads during concerts, children misuse the in-app purchase, undated social news and constantly sharing selfies (Lim, 2016). The consequences are bad impact on studies, the students become additive to mobile phones which lead to poor grades. Accidents also occur as drivers play phone while driving and will cause serious health issues (Point, 2015). To solve this, parents should limit the types of apps, parents should educate their children the proper way to use the mobile apps (Life, 2012).

References

Life, T. (2012) How to Prevent your Teen From Misusing Their Cell Phone - This Busy Life, This Busy Life. Available at: http://www.thisbusylife.com/2012/11/12/how-to-prevent-your-teen-from-misusing-their-cell-phone/(Accessed: 18 June 2016).

Point, M. (2015) Positive and negative impact of cell phones, My Essay Point. Available at: http://myessaypoint.com/positive-and-negative-impact-of-cell-phones (Accessed: 18 June 2016).

By: Lau Jing Qi

Monday, 20 June 2016

Kid Racks up almost $6,000 on Jurassic World in-app purchases

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Nowadays, there are many mobile apps that use in-app purchases. According to news, a 7-year-old boy had nearly spent almost $6,000 in in-app purchases bills, including $2,000 spent in just one hour. He claimed to not be aware that he was spending real money for upgrading dinosaurs on the mobile apps games, Jurassic World. As a consequence of that, his father had run into credit cards problems after got the credit cards bills from the bank. To make sure that kids will not use real money to make in-apps purchase unintentionally, parents should monitor their kids while they are playing mobile apps games. Besides, there should be added a tutorial on setting up parental controls inside the App Store to improve this problem.

Issues

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Monday, 20 June 2016