What do your mobile apps say about you?

These include the 'intrusive terms of service' whereby Facebook requires access to the contacts to make calls without your knowledge and access to your microphone to record your calls, gathering all this information about you through your phone. After a brief stint of paranoia I deleted the messaging app off of my phone, and restricted the access permission of many others apps. However, after looking into a bit further it seems as though the Facebook messaging app isn't as malicious as I had been led to believe. It did however get me thinking about the security issues around the apps and the permissions on our electronics devices. As naïve as it sounds, it's not something I ever thought too much about, which is crazy given how attached I am to my phone at times. With more and more of our lives revolving around our smartphones, depending on them from everything from communication, finding directions, entertainment and even to wake us up in the morning (alas the death of the alarm clock), how much of our lives are given away through the use of our phones? And where is all this information going? I can make my peace with mobile apps requiring permission to certain features of the phone in order for it to function the way I want it to, but what worries me is the lack of transparency around these issues. Yes I agree, companies will include these details in their terms of service. However, they are also aware that very few people actually read these before accepting them and installing the apps. As it stands generally people are not aware (nor are they made aware by the companies) of what they are allowing access to and this is what I think needs to change. In this day and age there are very few who don't use their phones for social media, online gaming or online activity of some sort and it does make good business sense for companies to have access to our online habits. For us, these apps having access to our location in order to provide directions and access to our microphones in order to make calls through the apps does make sense, so I can make peace with that. The reasons the rumour mill starts and people begin to panic about the intrusiveness of certain apps is the lack of awareness around the issues. Take Snapchat for example, the rising popularity of the app is down to its features where you can send a snap and it gets deleted after a certain number of seconds. Only it doesn't. Snapchats terms and conditions even state the pictures aren't deleted, that they are just not visible to the user but they still exist and are still stored in Snapchats servers. Which is fine, as this is all stated in the t&c's, but the point is how many of Snapchats 30 million monthly active users are actually aware that its most popular feature isn't as it seems? I'm not saying that mobile apps are wrong in what they require access to in order to function; I just think people should be made more aware of what they are allowing access to. Education around these issues is key and the more transparency and information people are given the less likely there is to be any backlash or boycotting of certain apps. This is particularly important now with the ever increasing number of teenagers and kids who have access to Smartphone's and tablets, and beyond that the touchscreen generation of young children and toddlers, who are using tablets before even starting school. If adults in our generation aren't fully aware of what information we are sharing, who is going to educate the younger generations? I think that companies who develop these apps should make more of an effort to be honest and transparent about what they are accessing and why, rather than hiding them in the terms of service. Allow people to be aware of what choices they are making and what information they are sharing. Do you agree? We'd love to hear your thoughts! Anndeep Sandhu is a marketing executive with Enigma People Solutions.