The Hidden Truth

It was Sunday; I was bored watching all those reality shows on TV. So thought of taking a small nap. I was just about to close my eyes, suddenly my phone vibrated. It was a message from Neha “ Hey Ravi will you do something for me? Can you get the gang together and meet me at our favorite hangout place CAFE Cool today at 7:00 pm” I was shocked, why is she talking like this. I was quite sure something might have happened because she has never texted me like this. I called my remaining friends and informed them about the evening plan.

It’s difficult to find a place on weekends so I reached there in advance. I called Mahesh and Devi to check their whereabouts but there was no response from both the sides. I knew they were driving so thought not to disturb them again. I didn’t call Neha because I know she never comes late. She is very punctual and this time also she made it on time. After reaching, her first question was where are those idiots? I said they are on their way, will be reaching here anytime. I asked her, what happened? why you are looking so tensed?’ she said she has been continuously receiving calls from an unknown number. Soon Mahesh and Devi also joined us they were also shocked hearing that. She said initially, even she thought it might be one of us. But she got suspicious when the caller said “I know some secrets about you” and that voice was unrecognizable. I told her to give me that number and I tried calling him from my phone but there was no response either. We all were scratching our head to figure out how to find this guy. Suddenly, Mahesh screamed he said, dude, why not try finding his name on True caller app. It’s an app which will search and identify any phone number and block unwanted calls and hidden numbers.
I tried finding this app on play store. I started downloading it but when I was installing it. The app started asking me for certain permissions. It’s not like, I have not seen this before but to some extent, it did catch my attention this time.
• Allow True caller to access device location
• Allow True caller to make and manage phone calls
• Allow True caller to access contacts
• Allow True caller to access Media files

We all got more curious we literally forgot our motive behind downloading this app. We all had only one question in mind why this app is asking for so much of permissions. I googled to find out more information and was shocked to see the results.
• Location: An app that asks for your approximate, network-based location can now gain permission to track your exact location with your device’s GPS.
• SMS: An app that only needs to receive text messages can now gain the permission to send SMS messages in the background, potentially costing you money.
• Phone: An app that asks to read your call log can now gain permission to reroute outgoing calls and make phone calls without asking you.
• Photos/Media/Files: An app that needs to read the contents of your USB storage or SD card can now format your entire external storage device.
• Camera/Microphone: An app that has permission to take pictures and videos (for example, a camera app) can now gain the permission to record audio. The app could listen to you when you use other apps or when your device’s screen is off.

All these companies who are developing the apps and asking for our personal details have one thing in common. They all are part of a PRISM program. “PRISM program is a massive surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). The PRISM program utilizes extensive data mining efforts to collect information and analyze that data for patterns of terrorist or other potential criminal activity.”
So basically, PRISM is an NSA program which allows NSA to get access to all these entities data whenever they want. The USA is spending 156 + 16 billion dollars just to suck in the new data which is been generated all over the world. Wow! Our personal data is accessible to everyone and we are not even aware of it.
Now, we came to know, why we have been receiving messages from different credit card companies. Loan departments, lottery scams. In short, these people have been selling our data openly in the market. We are not only giving them permission to use our numbers but also to read/write all our text messages, track our locations and take pictures and videos from our phone. But even after knowing the hidden truth we can’t do anything because if we don’t allow them to do so we will not be able to use their apps.
Anyways, we got what we wanted. The person who was troubling Neha turned out to be her school friend Rajiv. But Instead of getting angry we were all thankful to him. We got to learn something which most of the people don’t know. We all decided that we would spread this word with all our colleagues and our loved ones.