Transcript of Gemma Bath from 2MCE Community Radio and Rainer Wasinger from the University of Sydney / Smart Services CRC during an Interview on Mobile Application Use and Privacy, as part of the Homepage (IT news) program on September 24, 2010.

Gemma Bath [00:16]: This week, I'm looking at smartphone applications. They seem to be coming out of our ears. Applications to translate foreign street signs, cure you're snake phobia, buy shoes online, even face recognition of passers-by; but is the amount of data these applications are now able to collect about individuals and their surroundings all with the click of a button turning into a very real privacy threat. These applications mean that any public data that exists anywhere can be harnessed for applications as trivial as finding the closest public toilet. With over 200,000 applications or apps available on just one brand of these smartphones, it's no wonder that our privacy is now becoming a topic of discussion. A recent survey into these applications found that 30% of the apps out there access our location, 10% access our contacts, and 30% access third-party code; but it's not all negative, there are so many positives for these applications, especially for areas of education, tourism, medicine, hospitality, and retail, who have been able to revolutionise business with the introduction of these applications. Applications that help doctors operate and med students learn anatomy are just a few. I will look into an example of a business's successful use of a smartphone application later on; but first a closer look at the loss of privacy and the amount of accessible information out there free to be snatched up and used by these smartphone applications. Is it getting to a creepy level? I am chatting to Rainer Wasinger, a researcher at the CHAI group at the University of Sydney.

Gemma Bath [01:55]: Do you think that society should get used to the idea of constantly being recorded or scanned by devices in these mobile phones; is it a phenomenon that is increasing?

Rainer Wasinger [02:05]: Well there are advantages and disadvantages with this type of technology, I mean it makes us safer and that's often how it is broadcast to the public, for example all of the video cameras that we have around society, but in the same sense, depending on who has access to this data it can also make us more vulnerable, and so I guess in one sense we are becoming a little bit subdued by the fact that this is happening on a national if not global scale, controlled by governments, but that may also then be making us a little bit more blasé for example about the type of content that we are also just making publically available through social networking sites and online in general.

Gemma Bath [02:45]: These applications on these smartphones seem to be shaking people's idea of privacy concerns even more than the whole Facebook debacle did. What is your opinion of this?

Rainer Wasinger [02:54]: There are hundreds of thousands of mobile apps now out on the different app stores; on the Apple App Store there's over 200,000 different apps now; on android market there's over 90,000 apps; and all of these apps do something; throughout the day between getting up and going to sleep; the user might on their smartphone device be reading email, they might be social networking, they might be reading a book, they might be doing their banking, just surfing/browsing the Internet; there are a whole range: twittering, facebooking, SMSing, perhaps even making a phone call somewhere; throughout the day, we are using many many many different apps, each one needing different sets of permissions for example to the underlying operating system device, be that Internet access, be that access to our contacts, our phone books, being access to the location. This is a growing trend, what we are seeing here with user privacy, whether or not we should just be accepting all of this; but these mobile devices are really powerful in terms of the technology and the features that they have on them and the fact, more importantly, that we carry these devices on us 24/7 more or less; because of those attributes these devices will become really powerful in the future; that's not just the smartphone operating system but there's also the browser-in-the-web paradigm, and then also a very important part going into the future, is because these devices are carried on us 24/7, the user models using our private information, our preferences, what the things we like, the things we don't like, who are our friends, the applications we use and don't use; everything about us; those user models have the ability to become very very rich. There already are rich user models online, behind closed walled garden services like Facebook for example.

Rainer Wasinger [04:46]: With regard to recommendations for smartphone use and protection of privacy on smartphone, I recommend physically protecting the device, for example password protecting it so that if it's lost no one can just access all the contacts and calendar entries; being diligent, I think that just comes without saying, so the applications that are installed on these smartphone devices, and mobile devices in general; we need to be diligent, so we need to look for example on the Android operating system at what permissions the application is actually after without just dismissing that and saying yeah yeah it'll be fine. So we need to be diligent about what we install. If we take some precautions then I think we can enter this new decade protected.