What We Can Learn About Privacy From Faith-based Apps
1A
NPR
4.3 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
The popularity of the apps was buoyed by the pandemic. Religious services moved online and people sought out new ways to engage with their faith from home. But that shift has also raised questions about user privacy.
Members of religious minorities have particular reason to be wary of surveillance and breaches of privacy online.
What privacy expectation should there be for faith-based apps? And how does the movement of religious experiences into the virtual world align with spirituality?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, my name is Danielle and I'm calling from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. |
| 0:11.6 | My name is Sue from the Atlanta area and I do use a number of faith-based apps. |
| 0:17.2 | None of them require any subscription nor do they ask for permission to access contacts |
| 0:23.4 | or any other information on my phone. |
| 0:26.2 | I actually have one that I do, called JW.org and it doesn't use any personal information. |
| 0:34.2 | It doesn't have any cookies and costs absolutely nothing. |
| 0:38.0 | I'm Catholic, so most of them are Catholic, but a few others remain streamed Christian. |
| 0:42.2 | I recommend them to others because I've had a positive experience. |
| 0:46.5 | The act of prayer is at least 5,000 years old and likely much older. |
| 0:51.4 | Some anthropologists believe the earliest human beings practice something that we would |
| 0:55.2 | recognize as prayer. |
| 0:57.4 | But some forms of prayer today look very different than they did back then. |
| 1:01.0 | They've gone digital. |
| 1:02.6 | Faith-based for profit apps have seen a surge of investment from venture capitalists. |
| 1:07.5 | Last year, those apps attracted about $175 million in funding, nearly four times what they |
| 1:13.1 | got in 2020. |
| 1:15.0 | It's a trend faith leaders are paying attention to. |
| 1:17.9 | Here's Reverend Brian Heron, who leads the Presbyteria of the Cascades, a group of churches |
| 1:22.8 | in Oregon and Washington. |
| 1:24.6 | It seems to me that when we are using these free prayer apps that we need to remember that |
| 1:29.9 | we are using them as consumers, they will provide a platform for prayer, but it's an exchange |
| 1:35.4 | for profit. |
... |
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