Friday, July 19, 2013

Jay Z Under Fire for Invasion of Privacy


A privacy advocate group wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Jay Z and Samsung for privacy violations related to the Magana Carta Holy Grail free app giveaway...

Samsung famously gave away 1 million copies of Jay Z's new album The Magna Carta Holy Grail 72 hours before it's official release to users who downloaded a Samsung smartphone app [click here if you missed that].

The catch is that users had to agree to give Jay and Samsung access to their phone storage, location, phone call details, networks and other apps on their phones. They also had to give the Magna Carta app permission to post on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center [Epic] is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the app, calling it unnecessarily invasive and "depriving users of meaningful choice regarding the collection of their data."

Epic wants the FTC to order Samsung to "delete the user data that was improperly obtained" and, in future, collect only user data that is "necessary to run the app".