Consumer Privacy Rage Hits the Pundit Himself!

Really? Sorry. I know I sound like a 14 year-old but it's best I could come up with when I saw this request from an app on my iPhone. The application, Hipstamatic, is one my my favorites and one of the more innovative photo taking app in the Apple store, yet it represents a lot of what is at the core of privacy complaints that even non-privacy wonks can relate to and experience personally.

I was very disappointed to see the window below when I tried to use my Facebook credentials to sign in (never a good idea) to the Hipstamatic account log-on that I had forgotten.

You can see the requested credentials that the app is asking for. But the really shocker, and indicative of the very privacy issue that more and more consumers are starting to awake to and protest against, is the is in the highlighted section at the bottom and the perceived need for access to my data even when I'm not using the application!

Is there anything left to say but, Really? ('WTF?' was a non-starter. My boss might be reading this blog)