Quite some while ago there were reports that smartphone apps were sharing user personal information with ad networks, and it now appears that a Federal grand jury is investigating, and has apparently issued subpoenas to mobile developers.
According to an article over on Apple Insider included in the subpoenas is music service Pandora and apparently were made public in filings that were related to Pandora’s initial public offering says an article over on Market Watch.
Apparently, Pandora said in the filings… “In early 2011, we were served with a subpoena to produce documents in connection with a federal grand jury, which we believe was convened to investigate the information sharing processes of certain popular applications that run on the Apple and Android mobile platforms.”
However, Pandora doesn’t believe they are the target of the Federal probe and commented… “We believe that similar subpoenas were issued on an industry-wide basis to the publishers of numerous other smartphone applications.”
Personally I say good, why should mobile apps be allowed to get away with sharing users info without their permission, if they want to share then be up front and ask otherwise don’t do it, what do you think?
Image courtesy of Watblog.
