Apps called free, but they have a huge privacy and common sense cost

FLORENCE, Ore. – Charley gives his new iPad a suspicious sideways squint as his son points out all the Apps his dad can download for free; in turn, this 86-year-old retired hospital administrator quips “you keep it,” after returning his high-tech Christmas gift with a strange, nervous unease about him.

Charley, an 86-year-old retired hospital administrator, produces a spiral-bound paper notebook and proceeds to write down what times during the day he needs to take his meds, while also recording a memo for the local nurse that visits him at a senior home here in the coastal retirement community of Florence along Oregon’s central coast. Charley then peers out the window this Dec. 26 and notes how “a cold winter sun” greets visitors who are saying goodbye to their parents and grandparents here. “I don’t need one of these apps to tell me the weather when I can see outside,” says Charley with a look that’s compassionate, troubled and still. “I don’t like all the questions I have to answer when it came to my son pointing out these so-called ‘free’ apps. Why do they want to know so much about me,” he adds while sharing the apprehension – with a faint though distant nervous anxiety – about being given an iPad for Christmas.

“Who needs it, who wants it but the kids who don’t want to do anything but play on that thing,” the senior adds with an unruly feeling of disorientation that many at this senior home feel when “the children come through our front door with all these technology things.”

Apps offer “no free lunch,” capture your personal information

Apps for “APPlication” is a common term these days for savvy iPhone users, but don’t assume everyone knows what “apps” are, says Margie, a Seal Rock “Baby Boomer” who tried and use the word “app” during a recent Scrabble game with friends in this central Oregon coast hamlet and got shot down as “not being a real word;” still, there’s a recent Time Magazine list of the top 50 apps for those who use these popular mobile applications in their smartphones.

APPlication started out as a sort of shorthand for “application” in the IT community, say local computer geeks who are trying to educate aging “Baby Boomers” about this popular term “apps” for “distribution platforms.” In turn, the geeks explain that computer people like to “abbreviate just about everything.”

Apps also tell you what time it is; or other “high tech” tasks as select me to place a call, view a video, see what time it is, write something down or as Charley the senior says: “Anything and everything you can do already with a pencil and a paper notepad.”

Still, millions of Americans got an iPad or something like it for Christmas and they’re now hungry to use it so they can save themselves time; thus, having more time to spend with family and friends or to read the 3,500 books that are now available on the handy iPad.

Take the bait and download the "free" app

However, the so-called “free” apps for iPads and smartphones come with a much higher price that nobody seems to care much about until they’re being watched by “Big Brother” or targeted by some super computer that has created a “profile” about them and they’re buying habits.

"Let's say you want to buy now, so that'll tell you can buy now because it's not likely that the price will go down in the future," explained Adam Hanft, a branding and advertising expert during a Dec. 25 CBS News “Sunday Morning” TV interview.

"This one is safe to buy. This one it says, 'Wait.' It looks at the price history, what price it was before, and makes some projections on what the price is going to be. And that really is another level of data sophistication. It's not just, 'What's the cheapest price now?' It's what you can expect going forward,” added Hanft, while CBS News reminder consumers that if you are collecting more data with your iPad and smartphone “so are retailers.”

In turn, a computer science student at the University of Oregon named Ron Hall thinks “consumers need to be very aware of what they’re doing when downloading these ‘free’ apps. I mean people with their iPads think they’re so slick and in the know, when they don’t have a clue about the game. And, the game is to draw out as much information about your private life as possible for a myriad of purposes that are not in your best interest.”

Hall goes on to state other “dangers of apps,” during a Dec. 26 Huliq interview.

“You have rights and freedoms. But under the guise of apps, you are getting down on bended knee and giving many of those rights and freedoms up to what? An app that tells you what time of day it is? An app that gives you directions to such and such when you well know how to get their anyway. An app that allows you to compare prices when just about everything being sold now after the holidays is in the same ballpark. What about common sense? There’s no app for that because you’ve lost it by giving up your common sense to having an app do such and such for you,” adds Hall who is working on his masters in computer science along the lines of “finding ways and means to keep technology as ethiotical as possible. I want to be a watch-dog for those SOBs out there who wants to rip you off with the bait; that’s more apps and more you doing what they want you to do! Think about it as you enjoy your apps this week.”

Data miners figuring you out big time

It’s no secret – if you’re wired to the teeth like most Americans – that somebody out there in cyberspace has your number. They probably know more about you than the government or the IRS based on what apps you download and what Internet sites you visit, and what you do with your Facebook page, adds computer science student Ron Hall.

In other words, “every time you use a price comparison app, or browse or buy online, you're telling the retailer as much about you as you're learning about them,” added the Dec. 25 CBS “Sunday Morning” report.

"That's incredibly valuable data," said Hanft. "They can sell that data. They could market to you based on that data. It all goes into the huge amount of online information, digital breadcrumbs that then gets aggregated and used to market to you more effectively. So these apps are free, but they have a privacy cost."

Top 50 apps offered, while comedians say the best app is your brain

Thus, apps are now becoming part of the lexicon (language) and even entered into mainstream jokes. For instance did you near that Newt Gingrich has a few new apps: “Where’s Tiffany’s,” or “What’s an Occupy Mic Check?”

Apps can be addictive, say geeks like Ron Hall who said he sometimes forgets that “I can just talk to people to get information over downloading an app. But, I know the kids don’t feel that way because apps are fun.”

One Boomer, acting playful, asked computer geek Hall “what do you do if you want to just buy your girlfriend some flowers and can’t decide on what to get her?

In turn, Hall said “you could check out these apps.” And, the Boomer replied, “why don’t you just visit some florists, and simply ask them for advice on what flower to buy?

Apps allow you to avoid talking to people

“Nah, we don’t talk to people. We use our apps,” the Hall said; while playing along as a usual geek may answer with that cool elegance, and a refined sophistication that says the concept of “apps” takes human communications into a whole new dimension where the smartphone does your thinking and even communicating for you.

Still, many Boomers don’t buy apps as the “best thing since sliced bread.”

"Addictions," says Joseph Frascella, director of the division of clinical neuroscience at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), "are repetitive behaviors in the face of negative consequences, the desire to continue something you know is bad for you."

Image source of a technology that was perfected thousands of years ago – via handwritten notes in a paper notebook – that allows you to use paper to do much the same things as apps and iPads do today. Photo courtesy Wikipedia

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