Your kids’ apps are spying on them. Here’s what to do.
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2022
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on “Post Reports,” we talk to tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler about how apps are spying on our kids — and what we can do to stop it.
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Geoff has been looking at tech from a consumer perspective in his series We the Users, and he says apps are spying on our kids at a scale that should shock you.
More than two-thirds of the 1,000 most popular iPhone apps likely to be used by children collect and send their personal information out to the advertising industry, according to a major new study shared with Geoff by fraud and compliance software company Pixalate. On Android, 79 percent of popular kids apps do the same.
On today’s show, Geoff tells us who the biggest offenders are, and what parents can do to protect their kids’ privacy online.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm trying to lead a revolution here for we the users where we push back, we push back |
| 0:06.7 | against companies that have treated our personal lives like their property. |
| 0:13.0 | And we need to have the voice in that with the companies and with the government that |
| 0:17.0 | has frankly been asleep at the wheel and letting them get away with it. |
| 0:24.7 | Jeffrey Fowler is a tech columnist for the post. |
| 0:27.9 | And he's been working on a project that he calls We the Users. |
| 0:32.4 | And the whole premise is that we know now that technology is not always on our side. |
| 0:39.2 | In many cases, we're not using it. |
| 0:41.4 | It's using us. |
| 0:43.0 | And we the users, and by that I mean, you know, we as consumers and as patients and as parents |
| 0:49.7 | and all the different hats we wear in our lives of technology want to sort of claim what's |
| 0:54.8 | ours in this space. |
| 0:56.1 | So I actually took some inspiration from the Constitution. |
| 1:00.9 | So I rewrote the preamble to the Constitution instead of we the people, it's we the users |
| 1:06.2 | in order to form a better internet. |
| 1:12.8 | And there's one thing in particular that Jeff was really concerned about, both as a tech |
| 1:17.4 | columnist but also as a parent. |
| 1:20.2 | All the apps commonly used by kids can violate their privacy. |
| 1:26.6 | Our children's privacy should be protected online and the responsibility for that should |
| 1:31.1 | not be on the shoulders of teachers and parents. |
| 1:33.8 | It should be on the shoulders of this industry that is taking this data and making billions |
| 1:38.4 | of dollars from it. |
... |
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