The Pocket Spy Who Reads Your Messages!

Apps on your phone play data pirates to sweep all your info for the sake of corportates

- Yamini Kalra

Ever been surprised by the customised service offers for cabs, loans and food delivery options landing in your phone, almost as if…uncannily…somebody had read your mind? Well, it’s not your mind, but your phone that is being read. And it’s not just Big Brother, that one all-seeing eye of modern nightmares, but a whole noisy brotherhood that is tailing you, watching every move you make. everything you do is data, and that data does not belong to you. It belongs to the marketplace. And a hundred eyes are reading you, breaking you down, reconstructing your every whim and fancy, your every need, and cooking up an offer that will determine the next choice you make of your own free will.

Indeed, many internet users are now aware of and even used to these pop-ups predicting your consumer needs from your data history. In a more innocent world, it might even seem as if the ‘corporate ‘brotherhood’ is trying to help us best decide what we want by giving us the options. But, it gets creepy when you realise that you’re not the only one with access to the SMS texts in your cellphone, your pocket picture gallery… even your call log. The prying eyes come in cheerful pictograms that are sprinkled all over the menu of your fancy Android or Apple phone.