LinkedIn Would Like To Do What?
Perhaps this article will not quite go through, and I might lose my LinkedIn account for a while, but I am pretty shocked to receive a message on my phone today of:
Honestly ... in a time of focusing on privacy and security, and GDPR just round the corner, allowing an application to send whatever it wants over Bluetooth is pretty shocking, especially as there is no detail on what it will actually send. There's no link to click on to show you what it will be sending. So:
Will it send all my contact details or my emails to devices that are in the neighbourhood?
Will it tell other people what Web sites I've visited?
Many companies are now looking at the ability to harvest data through Bluetooth devices, and Google even now has an API which allows Web services the ability to gather information over Bluetooth (and which is built into the Chrome browser). The Web Bluetooth API enables the connection from a Web browser to devices using Bluetooth, but to do so the user much explicitly grant the Web app access to the devices. Once paired the service can gather and exchange a whole lot of information about the device. Mozilla, on the other hand, has given the advice of “do not use it on production sites facing the web.” There is thus the ability of the Web Bluetooth API to harvest masses of data and then distribute it over Bluetooth networks.
Well LinkedIn, if you want to be trusted, you'll have to try a bit harder! Creating a message such as this is like handing over a blank cheque.
My response was far less polite than yours. There is an interesting issue here around compliance and customer opt-ins. If the data to be sent is not clearly identified, bounded and auditable by the user, how can they be expected to provide informed consent. It would be useful if regulators actually looked at this type of thing and provided clear guidance.
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7 年Totally agree Bill