Technology used to be so simple. Cell phones were only for
telephone calls. CD players operated the CD you chose. And the
radio worked only if you had signal. Now, smart phones perform
all three operations at once for a small price to pay. Pandora,
an online radio provider,was recently subpoenaed to a federal
court for selling consumer information gathered from their
mobile smartphone application without proper disclosure. Age,
gender, zip code, and music preferences were collected by
Pandora for specific target advertising. In this situation the
saying, “there is no free lunch” holds a lot of truth. If an
iPhone or Android application is free, be skeptical. Because
Apple certified the use of the Pandora application on the
iPhone, they are also under the scrutiny of the Security
Exchange Commission. Is this all one big conspiracy where large
corporations hold inordinate amounts of data about the public
users? Will smartphone fanatics be able to protect their privacy
over the internet and cell phone applicatio