Essay Sample on Cell Phone Safety

As technology advances and modernizes our personal information and private data are being put at a great risk. Within the United States millions of people are constantly using their cellular devices for everyday tasks with little to no knowledge of what is really happening behind the scenes. In the US our safety is extremely compromised as it endangers the general public through geo tracking, data collection, and malicious apps.

To start off geo tracking is becoming an increasingly bigger safety issue as numerous apps and softwares on cellular devices are abusing it. Throughout the United states our phones compromise our private locations constantly without our knowledge. This grave issue is very obviously a major issue as many hackers and companies could abuse this information. Additionally, it is not only recording their general locations for things such as advertisements but according to WMFY 2 News their '' apps frequently transmitted her exact location – longitude and latitude – to app trackers based in Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Dublin and Singapore”(WMFY). Therefore, this extremely dangerous and sensitive information is being broadcasted across the globe to numerous locations and people.  This quote emphasizes how much information is truly being recorded from these common apps that millions of people have downloaded across the United States. Even major apps such as the weather app will still collect this sensitive information that the user may not suspect, as they appear to be trustworthy and popular companies. Additionally, it has been shown that geotracking services on a person’s phone can be used against themselves. So on Tech radar they state, “This geolocation information can be quite useful, and law enforcement can track a suspect via their phone…While disclosing location data may seem innocuous, it is still an invasion of privacy”(TechRadar). Hence, this raises the question of the abuse of this information, even done by the police. Clearly, sensitive information that is meant to be private, can be exposed, even if a person appears to be a suspect in a criminal case. So any common person in an investigation can have all their information and privacy compromised and invaded by the law enforcement, the very people they used to trust. This misuse of  geo location information can be extremely corrupt and pose a safety concern to many.

The major data collection being done presents another significant issue within cellular devices. Various information and sensors are consistently collecting, storing and analyzing data on all of the cellular devices. This kind of data collection can be seen on WMFY 2 News as they claim, more than “1,400 requests for data in just a single weekend…Within the first 60 seconds, app trackers initiated 119 requests for data from my phone”(WMFY). So not only are these phones geotracking the majority of the United but they are also always collecting more data on our lives. Such large amounts of data being requested in just under a minute or a single weekend, obviously is very concerning and a very limited, small number of people would even know this is happening. Obviously this sheer amount of data that's being collected cannot be safe for the general public in the United states as it most likely contains sensitive details and statistics on people. Furthermore, the data that is stored on user’s phones if in the wrong hands can pose major threats. According to the FTC “Your cell phone holds some of your most sensitive, personal information... If your phone ends up in the wrong hands, someone could steal your identity, buy stuff with your money, or hack into your email or social media accounts.” Since the average American is on their phone all throughout the day while logging into vulnerable accounts, communicating sensitive information and many other important tasks, if compromised could be very worrying. If a person’s phone is either stolen or hacked, which both are extremely common, it could be very damaging to the person. The safety of personal information is compromised by the vast amount of material stored on everyone's phones. Also, a majority of this data collection as well, is done without the knowledge of many as numerous apps the second a person downloads requests for them to sign a policy agreement. WMFY , likewise conveys this argument as it states “taking the time to review all of those privacy policies to learn how the companies might use the information you've agreed to share with The Weather Channel — requires an additional 500+ pages of reading”(WMFY). These user agreements are overfilled with law jargon and can be up to hundreds of pages filled with information that the average American can not comprehend. Many of these policies that can be considered a threat are often included in the fine lines of these documents so that the majority will be manipulated to accept the agreement. With the obvious efforts to keep significant knowledge of the data collection away from the user, it can cause safety complications, as these people are not aware of the information they are giving away to these companies. 

In addition to data collection and geotracking, malicious software poses a massive threat to the very safety of countless Americans. These malicious apps can include various sensors that are able to detect and uncover sensitive information. Although some efforts are being made to remove these apps, for instance, Science News states “Google Play has already discovered apps that are abusing their access to those sensors. Google recently booted 20 apps from Android phones and its app store” (Science News). Even with this effort many of these apps still remain and are being added every single day. This magnifies how many apps are misusing their software inorder to gain access to confidential data. These sensors can go as far as predicting keystrokes with a significant percentage of success according to Science News. Only using recording of the sounds made, angle and motion of the phone have extreme accuracy, which results in major issues. These issues can  include being able to predict important passwords to sensitive accounts, that if exposed could be very dangerous. The advancements of these programs can have scarily accurate results and are used in numerous malicious apps. Furthermore, even when people attempt to become more cautious of their online presence, this could easily backfire to uneducated users. Due to the fact many fake antivirus apps are available to the public on major platforms, many are vulnerable to this scam. TechRadar portrays this as they state “The Google Play Store isn't consistently helpful either, as there are even fake antivirus apps, that are really disguised malware”(TechRadar). Once again, major apps like the Google Play Store are not a reliable and trustworthy source for a majority of the US compromising their safety due to this. So more often than not, malicious software will impersonate the very app that the user is trying to protect against. Moreover many do not have a safe app to turn to in order to prevent these very immindent and concerning threats. These apps will once again collect your private information while the app is activated and can gain access to applications such as the device's camera and microphone. In general, malicious software is a notable safety concern to Americans as these apps can be very risky due to their disguises and abuse of their access they have to the users phone.

Overall, in the United states, the general population is not safe at all online as there are a multitude of major risks that threaten the safety of the user. Therefore, geo tracking is gravely endangering a user’s personal information, data collection exposes their privacy and malicious software all threaten a person's cellular device.