Microsoft should follow Apple’s lead and protect personal info

An ugly consequence of the federated tools we all use is that they often siphon much more information about us than we realize or would want. Case in point: A colleague at another publication signed up for the Beepmo business-networking service only to find it was spamming his Twitter followers with “who cares?” status info. (Beepmo says it will fix this “mistake.”) Social media companies like Foursquare have been doing that kind of Twitterspamming forever. Apple and Google had to pull apps from their app stores that raided users’ address books to spam all their contacts. Facebook and Google mine anything you post or store on their services for ads and who knows what else — they’re not telling.

It’s very convenient to, say, link your cloud storage account to a bunch of apps for easy file sharing, to use a common ID such as OpenID or Facebook login across multiple sites, or use a service like Google Voice to filter and selectively forward phone calls based on knowing who’s in your contacts list. Such service federation is a great convenience and efficiency creator. Unfortunately, the convenience is often the inducement to strip-mine your personal data.

I’ve argued that we all should be paid for our personal data’s value when it is used. If we’re the source of the value, we should get a cut. I’d love to see a virtual currency like privacy dollars (P$) established to normalize the rates, to keep the values equitable. Until then, we have to be on our toes.

There’s no silver bullet to ensuring that personal, private information goes only to the companies you allow and is then used for only purposes you explicitly agree to and can revoke at any time. That is not what any of these providers want; they covet unfettered access to and use of your data for however they can make money (ads are the least of it). So they won’t make it easy. And their useful services — electronic and mobile payments, travel reservations, media repositories, health and other record-keeping tasks, online storage, communications services, and social everything — will convince many people to turn a blind eye to the real price they’re paying for that convenience.

There are others that have a vested interest in keeping your private data under your control. Apple is the most advanced in this area. iOS already requires any app that tracks your location to get your permission, including a setting that lets you revoke that permission for any service at any time. OS X Lion does the same. Apple is expanding that privacy control to your contacts list, Twitter account, and Facebook account in iOS 6 (due this fall) and OS X Mountain Lion (due this month).

Thank goodness, if you’re an Apple user. After all, 18 percent of iOS apps already mine your contacts, according to Internet security firm Bitdefender — and 41 percent track your location. Many do so for legitimate purposes, some for illegitimate purposes, and most for a mixture of justifiable and exploitative reasons. At least in Apple’s world, the OS can give you control over who gets that information, if not what they do with it once they get it.

For Apple, it makes sense to do this. Apple’s business is based on highly loyal customers — few of its customers defect to a competitor — and protecting those consumers keeps them in the Apple fold. This is especially notable when the competition — I’m talking to you, Google — has a rapacious approach to mining user information in practically every product and service offered. After all, that’s how Google makes it money. The differentiation between the two companies is stark. Google offers none of the fine-tuned management capabilities for your personal information, though you can manage some of it in your Google account profile. (And you should.)

Google doesn’t seem to be as abusive with customer information as Facebook, a service that I’m shocked anyone trusts with any information given its long history of customer abuse. Still, Google has been caught stealing user data, and it paid a pittance in penalties as a result, so it has little reason to stop.

As Google gets more services that mine your information out the door — the new Google Now service is especially troubling to me given the detailed profile it builds of what you do, what you buy, and where you go — I hope the Apple privacy promise and users’ growing concerns lead to more user information-management controls. Its current “ask the first time and hope users forget they’re being tracked” approach is simply not right. A more privacy-friendly approach would help customers remain comfortable with Google’s ubiquitous monitoring and thus keep its business model going.

One company that could make a real difference is Microsoft. So far, it has provided minimal controls, letting users turn on or off apps’ access to your location and/or to your name and picture. As with Google’s Android, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. If Microsoft were to take the same fine-grained tack as Apple, you’d have the two major computing platforms working on behalf of users. That would have major repercussions on all those information-mining Web business and apps.

Microsoft’s not in the data-mining business like Google is, so I see no reason it shouldn’t take the same high road as Apple. Windows 8 is still in beta, with the final version expected to ship to manufacturers next month for products to be released in October. There’s still time for Microsoft to make a change that would help us all better maintain and control our private information, choosing when to share it and for how long.

Microsoft, you’ve shown a marked change for the better this year, finally competing on the mobile front and shaking off failed PC partnerships. Here’s another opportunity to be the new Microsoft.

This article, “Microsoft should follow Apple’s lead in protecting personal info,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.