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Why Users Don't Trust Mobile Apps
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes of the growing unease among consumers around mobile data privacy, and how this distrust will impact mobile app development. 'When every week seems to bring another news story about a data breach resulting in the theft of customer data, customers are growing increasingly jealous of their privacy. Given the unique nature of the data to be found on smartphones, it's only natural that they have begun to view mobile apps with a skeptical eye. If you're developing apps that use customers' mobile data, you need to do more than recognize these realities. You need to develop a policy that places secure, ethical, and appropriate handling of user data at the core of your application development process.'"
It's almost as though downloading random apps from the Internet to run on a device you use for personal information might be a bad idea.
I see this as having a huge impact for the market for apps and what kinds of apps can be developed.
The situation is developing where users don't want to give apps access to anything on the phone other than the data pipe, except for maybe a mapping application or something with an obvious need. This is really going to limit where apps can go.Because of the sins of Apple (and others), people don't trust the platform as much as they used to.
Instead of being a device we voluntarily turned over information to in order to expand its role in our life, we are starting to see it as something that needs to be reigned in, controlled, watched like a hawk.
Formerly people happily used Windows and IE to bring the internet into their lives. Now these are items you don't trust, you run several other programs on top to police them, etc.
It's really a shame that this greed for personal information to sell has set back the role that palmtop tech may otherwise have headed toward in our lives.