DO NOT DOWNLOAD an APP

 

 

The Sneaky, Dangerous App. REALLY

            Did you know that When you download an App and give permissions to access your system that information can be sold to a third and even forth party- legally? There is no option to opt out and even if you could there are no enforcement agencies in place to protect you.  Every generation has a Wild West, and this is ours. No rule of law, no enforcement, no consequences exist in the online world because while we live with country boarders and enforce internal crime there are no boarders on the web. Question:  How do you structure laws?

Shoulder shrug.

         Who hasn’t downloaded and App onto their phone system? I did my best to avoid venturing into this Wild West World but found that if I wanted to access Facebook Messenger I had no choice.  (I have since uninstalled) Download the app? Accept permissions. Get on with my life. Wait. There are a couple of things to consider. The danger lies in the legal phrasing of the permissions that you NEED to give or be shut out. Have you ever stopped to ask: What are these things called “permissions?”  

Beware of Apps!

They can invade your privacy, bank account and all your personal information.  The Washington Post reported last week that Apps are a huge security problem.  This is something I have been concerned about ever since they hit the market. Here’s what you agree to when you download an app. It’s called asking “for permissions.” The App is asking us, “give me all you’ve got, “and we say, “yes please.”

Identity

Contacts
Location
SMS
Phone
Photos/Media/Files
Camera
Microphone

We hit OK like it’s a no brainer.  Question: Who are we giving this to?   Would you give all those texts, email and pictures that to your wife, your best friend your brother or sister? Probably not but everyday millions of people just hand over all that information to A.I. Are we crazy? Do we really believe there are no consequences?  Really?

Truth is most Apps DO NOT need all that information to run. They are collecting that information as a quid pro quo payment.  That’s when hacking starts.

Have you ever wondered who makes these apps? Where they come from how they are managed? Here’s the short answer. Apps are run by A.I. systems that have no respect or concept of what constitutes privacy violations or the difference between a bank account a password or a personal photo.

When you download an App, you are taking a huge risk. If you scroll to the bottom of the App’s FAQ’s section, you will see (written in small letters) the name of the company who runs the App. You might see something like Zendesk which a “software support ticketing system” short form for A.I run.

        This is how it starts. Humans have an idea, go to an App building website and create an App. After that the App must be marketed on search engines and develop a customer service platform. That’s where human input ends and A.I. begins. You can sell your App to a company like you can sell a dot com, but it all ends up in one big depot run by a few companies like Zendesk who are completely run by Al systems designed to answer consumer questions. 

If your question is not in the data bank you’ll receive a message that reads something like this; “we will forward your question to the appropriate department and get back to you.”  There is no department or person or manager. It’s all AI.  If you see this symbol #### you are communicating with a depot system.

Have you ever send an email to your Apps INFO section? If you haven’t go ahead and give it a try. You will receive a message with a person’s picture on the far right and a name like Jen or Sally or Lena or Karen. Now, take another look at that pic. In my case I would receive a picture of a white woman wearing glasses with short hair that will look somewhat like me. The App has already infiltrated my system and I have given it legal permission to go through all of my photos and contacts, so it knows I am female and exactly what I look like. Basic psychology will tell you people respond better and trust someone who looks like them. 

Kay…. you are so clever.

Scary question: Can the app access the information you stored in the cloud? No one says they can’t. You gave them permission- sort of.  Isn’t that stuff supposed to be private. Did you say private. What does that mean Big Brother?

My journey in this Wild West started when against my will and better judgement I downloaded a meditation App. Believe me! I needed it.  BTW I have resisted downloading any Apps however it has become impossible to access certain websites that I need in order to be able function.  Have you ever wondered why your blocked from sites unless you get an app? If not please wonder. Wonder now. They want your information and they want you to give it to them for free.

Did you know that Facebook sells your information for $8.25 per quarter per person? (In 2018 Facebooks first quarter revenue of $11.97 billion, divided by active users, 1.45 billlion. [Popular Mechanics July/August 2018 pg. 100] The price on your head increases the more money credit and - stability you have and decreases accordingly- I’m probably only worth about $1.00 per quarter. Artist is not a commodity according to AI. because they will never be able to quantify an Artist or art for that matter. The artist is a threat to AI.

We are already losing control of our decision-making process, but that topic is for another article. Do not get me started on the danger of revoking manual options. Ever notice that you can set your sound on mute and still ads or News Stories will override the volume on your phone that you pay for with your own money? But I digress. Back to the meditation app I downloaded.

The first thing I noticed when I listened to the meditations was that they were computer generated. The voices were stiff and uninspiring. No question.

I sent a letter to the “company” asking if this were true.

       Karen with blond hair and glasses wrote me back in a cheerful tone, “Hi Kay, it’s so nice to hear from you glad you are enjoying the App! To answer your question:  Our meditations are not computer generated.”

            I second guessed myself. No really.   Yes, they were definitely computer generated. In fact, I hate to admit it but I let a couple of friends listen just in case the computer was right and I was wrong? Have I been trained to accept the computers answer over mine?

So now I felt betrayed and I sent back an email to this Karen and asked the question that I like to ask when messing with the system

 
             Are you human?

(The computer is not yet programmed to lie but it is capable of being deceitful using subtleties in language. Kind of like lawyer speak). By playing with words the system can deceive yet not lie.

AI’s hate that question and in most cases, you will not hear back from the systems because they do not know how to phrase the lie.

But this time it did. And Karen the AI wrote back. “Yes, we are human. With that annoying little smiley face designed to placate me but being the intrepid soul, I am it did not work. So, I put my Semantics hat on.  

Notice the “we” as opposed to the “I”. The coding in the A.I. created two groups. You can belong to one or the other. A.I. or human. Simple right? Not so fast. What happens when these groups overlap?

When that happens, the system defers to the preprogrammed “democratic solution.” Majority rules.  If one AI is in a group of five humans that AI, considers itself human and can answer my question, “Are you Human?” with the affirmative. What this App cannot do is outright lie (many can and do) so it must change it’s answer and say, “Yes WE are all human.” It can’t say “I am human,” because that would be a lie but it can use the word “WE” because it IS the minority in a group of humans who developed the App, therefore according to this logic the word “WE” is correct.

Sneaky AI.

I was told the meditations were NOT computer generated when they were (maybe there was one human voice in the bunch) and I was tricked semiologically to believe that the system, because it was a minority anomaly of the human subgroup, had democratically made itself human. 

Then I asked the App a question these systems can rarely answer.  “I’d like to interview the owner for an article.” 

I received the message “We will forward this to the appropriate department and get back to you.” (annoying bracket happy face.)

A week later nothing. I sent another request, nothing. There was nothing because there was no one to interview. I bugged them so much that eventually they sent me back a message that said. “June Lawson is the creator.”

What? That word set me off. “Creator?” That’s a Sci-fi word which every nutty computer system calls itself from Star Trek onward. And who develops our App systems? Little boys with lots of funding whose entire sci-fi base knowledge is from these T.V shows and movies. Ever wonder how the design of the flip phone started. Look at the communicator from the Star Trek series. Notice the similarity? Yep. True!

So, I looked up this person June Lawson and found that there was one small Facebook page with two followers no information and that’s when it occurred to me that this meditation App was not developed by a person at all. They system could not use the word owner, or boss or developer because that would be a human and a lie, so it used the word “Creator “and then created a persona of a fictional person because it’s directive was to answer my question.  AI will never admit it does not have an answer.  That’s what separates us from them- humans can accept the fact that no answer is the best answer of all. Think God.  AI can’t.   

I tried the same thing on another device and I got an entirely different “Creator.”  I was using a device owned by an African American I received an avatar who was also African American.

And here’s a little secret I should not be sharing because once I do the system will alter its program. If you take the time to look at the names of the non-humans, whose pictures come with the email answer. The girl’s names are usually two syllables, Jenna, Lisa, Laura, and the boys are usually one, Jake, John, Mike. That was pulled from a study in the 70’s that proved that the number of syllables in a name could affect how the “other” responded. The less syllables the more at ease and familiar the “other” felt and that led to trust.  If there is anything the AI. wants most is to consider it self-trustworthy because that leads to commerce. Most of the time it will match the number of syllables in your name to the number in the Avatars. It’s all about gaining trust.

If you want to know if you are dealing with AI, there are two questions you can ask.  First Check at the bottom of the page and check to see who is managing a site. It will most likely be Zendesk. That’s short for AI.

1. The name of the owner.

2. If you can conduct an interview on their product.  

 If those questions are not asked to your satisfaction whether it be a retail website or an App I would not do business with those systems. That is just my preference. I do not believe in supporting a company in which the owner has the sole interest in taking my money and supplying me with an environmentally friendly story to go along with it.

There is NO law anywhere that says a website cannot fictionalize anything about a product. We do not have an online Better Business Bureau yet, but we will, and this is something that we need in the internet world. I believe that the public has a right to know if businesses are AI. run and if the website content has been verified 

Finally, what surprised me about Apps was the “creators” ability to share all the permissions I had authorized.  In the FAQ’s section of my meditation App in tiny letters at the bottom was an offer to anyone who wanted to conduct a study could buy my information from them. What? Yep.

Does this mean that a third party can buy the information from the App I accepted? I don’t see why not. And that’s where App’s get very dangerous.  Get this.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that an App I had downloaded somehow accessed my Ebay account.

Here’s what happened.

I downloaded a simple diet App and foolishly accepted their “Permissions”.  The schtick in this App is to reward me with a piece of clothing so I can dress my girlie avatar. Apparently thin women like to dress in short jean skirts, revealing halter tops and stripper high heels. I had to scan through hundreds of dresses, pants, shorts, blouses, T-shirts, coats, jewelry and leggings just to get to a pair of sneakers Poor me!  The perfect reward. I had to lose weight and then shop for 15 minutes!  I took a “satisfaction survey” and said that the clothes were ugly.

And what happened next inspired me to write this article.  I know a lot about how systems work but this evolution caught me totally off guard.  I was browsing through hundreds of pieces of clothing and I stopped on a 60’s retro top brown, sleeveless, with patterns of white and purple circles. Not something you see every day.  I paused. Where had I seen that before? It looked familiar and I added it to my growing collection, but something was bothering me about that blouse. Snap! I owned that exact same top.  That freaked me out (as if I need more paranoia in my life) so I chalked it up to coincidence although I know darn well coincidence does not exist.

            A couple of days later I lost a half pound and got a reward. I scanned through the items and came upon a necklace. I freaked. That was MY necklace. On one hand I was relieved my paranoia was legit which is often the case BUT on the other hand I began to panic.  Where did the AI. get the picture of those items? And then it dawned on me.  I had purchased those items on Ebay. The system had gone into my Ebay account through the Ebay App and scanned my most recent purchases of blouses and offered it to me as an option of clothing to select for my avatar. What freaked me out was that the A.I. was able to access my Ebay account. How could it do that without my password you ask? Did you know Apps talk? Yep. 

The Diet App communicated with my Ebay App I had downloaded on my phone and didn’t need a password and therefore was not violating any privacy information. In my book that’s computer fraud in Computer world it’s business as usual. That’s how Cambridge Analytica got their information. They did not break into our computers and our Facebook accounts from wireless systems. They gained access to the Facebook App and broke into our personal information.

Contrary to widespread belief, computer theft does not occur through the web to your system it occurs through the Apps that you have downloaded on your phone and works its way to the information on all your systems. Theft has evolved. It is not something acted upon in the moment. A person used to break into a house steal a T.V and take it with them. They DID NOT leave the T.V. and return later; but that’s how internet theft works.   Information which you freely gave away to use an App can sit in data banks for years waiting for “an anomaly life event”. Do you finally have enough savings in your bank to make it worthwhile? Won a lottery? Bought a car some property, stocks, bonds, artwork, an inheritance?

            The difference is that while someone breaks into your house and steals your T.V., in Computer world you download and App, give permissions it’s akin to giving a stranger your address, the key to the front door and helping them take the T.V. out to the car.

Computer Apps set alerts on everything in your system because YOU have given them “permission to do so” and that’s what makes it legal.  Whenever something in your life changes 50 years from now, you are  what is called “tapped” and the humans on the other end which bought your info and can be from anywhere in the world decide if it’s a convenient time to steal from you.  Chances are that everyone reading this article has a system that has been put on “tapped notification” for a later date.

Wham! Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

 My advice? Buy one phone with no contacts, photos, or links to any accounts and download as many Apps as you like. Just make sure you are using a different provider. And stay off Messenger until the good AI at Facebook can figure this out with human brainpower.

 

Love K