SMARTPHONES: OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS

Abstract

The article looks at smartphones within the framework the ever-growing integration of digital services being offered to users today. It analyzes their typology, limits and scope, their positive and negative aspects, while taking a closer look at the risks and future consequences involved in setting up a system that generates information and personal data on users and stores them in the device itself as well as on computer platforms (the so-called clouds). This intimate information is subject to interpretation by personal-data mining (an advanced field of knowledge that focuses on data extraction, processing, and interpretation). This massive data set represents a source of information that has not been fully exploited to improve public health, facilitate human interaction, and enhance users' learning. On the other hand, different corporations have made use of it for purposes of industrial spying; commercial, political, or ideological surveillance of citizens; or direct interventions to manipulate behavior and control certain segments of the population.