Should I be worried about what apps I use?

‘FRAGS’, VIA EMAIL

There are two prevailing, competing logics regarding phone apps. The first is relatively liberal: who cares what you use, really? You’ll be fine. It’s only an app. Agree to whatever EULA they throw up, make sure you’re careful about your phone’s permissions, and there’s not much that can go wrong. The other more conservative school of thought suggests the complete opposite. You don’t know the underlying code of an app. You don’t know what data it is collecting, who it is communicating with, or whether some malicious payload has been tucked in there unbeknownst to Apple and Google’s store-checkers.

While GaGu, ever the ghostly diplomat, tends to hover somewhere in between, there’s a bit of merit to that second argument. In the early days of smartphones it was that pointless guff – the flashlight apps, the glug-glug ‘beer’ ‘drinkers’, you know the ones – which tucked in data-stealing nonsense. Today it’s... well, it’s flashlight apps again, a litany of absolutely pointless crap that (for some reason) asks for access to your location or just straight-up installs malware on your phone.

And then there’s the hiding-in-plain-sight stuff. Guru is wary, for instance, of apps of Chinese origin. Far be it for him to agree with a certain lurid ex-US-president, but you won’t find him installing TikTok. He is far too crusty to understand it, yes, but he’s also a bit concerned about the amount that TikTok knows. Same with apps like ReFace: no, you may not have Guru’s face. Another major app with ‘Face’ in the name should probably be off the books too – ahem – but you lot are incorrigible so Guru is not sure he can force you to drop your main source of ‘reliable’ health research and hilarious Minion memes.