I’m a cyber security expert – here are the apps I would NEVER use

Tom Gaffney is a cyber security specialist at F-Secure

Many of the world’s most popular apps have dubious terms of service and exploit private data to make money, a cybersecurity expert says.

This is what Tom Gaffney, cyber security expert at F-Secure, tells DailyMail.com there are several popular apps that I would never use for fear of what they do with private data.

He says that by allowing data monitoring to ‘big tech’ companies, they can decide what we see online and we become ‘defined by what computer algorithms decide for us.’

Below are Gaffney’s three apps he would never use due to privacy concerns.

Alexa

Digital voice assistants like Alexa are a serious threat to privacy, says Gaffney.

The devices listen for ‘wake words’ before operating, but they listen all the time – and capture bits of your voice and process them in data centers far from your home.

Gaffney says, “I don’t use them at all, but the ones I do, I wouldn’t put in the bathroom or bedroom. Although they wake up to the trigger words, they listen for a few seconds afterwards.

“The data that goes into the central cloud is by design, in fact, the processing could be done much more securely on the device, at home.”

Amazon’s digital assistant has a dedicated app that powers all of the company’s devices. Gaffney says, “I don’t use them at all, but the ones that I do, I wouldn’t put in the bathroom or bedroom.”

Uber

Uber has a history of privacy concerns, Gaffney says.

In addition to the massive data breach, the company also faced controversy over “God’s View,” which allowed employees to see where app users were.

Gaffney says: ‘Their previous head of security was accused of covering up a past data breach in 2016, in 2022 and more recently this year there was a leak of driver data.

WhatsApp

Gaffney says Meta-owned WhatsApp’s “end-to-end” encryption – where content is encrypted so that only users who are communicating can see messages – is a positive step, but he will no longer use WhatsApp because it shares data with Facebook.

It says: ‘WhatsApp has been providing the same user data since 2020 and merging it with Facebook as they share the same ownership. I quit WhatsApp when they changed their terms.’

What are companies saying?

DailyMail.com has approached the companies for comment.

An Uber spokesperson said: ‘More than 118 million active users trust Uber with their data and privacy. Uber has robust safeguards in place to prevent the loss or unauthorized use of personal information.”