Leaky mobile apps and privacy failure puts FinTech before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court of The Philippines decision in Grace Trimillos v FCash Global Lending Inc. , a Philippines registered and regulated corporation, found that
a) FCash was the developer and distributor of a mobile phone app relating to financial services.
b) Trimillos was a customer of FCash including for credit services.
c) FCash's app was installed on Trimillos' mobile phone
d) without her knowledge and/or willing consent the app accessed her mobile phone contacts list.
e) Fcash then sent messages to all or many of those listed in her contacts list.
f) that the messages told persons in her contacts list that Trimillos indebted to the bank and that that person was a guarantor for the loan. She did have a loan account but no person was a guarantor for it and that they would be required to cover the loan if there was a default.
g) That in the circumstances her privacy was compromised and FCash was liable in damages.
The leakage of informatgion by apps that obtain access to parts of the phone beyond those that are necessary for the performance of the app is a widespread problem. For example, WhatsApp, which feed information into the Meta data services, does not function without access to the phone's contacts list whereas other systems such as WeChat, Line and Telegram all function using a discrete contacts list.
Cleaning up the 'net was published in 2015. It was not Nigel Morris-Cotterill's first publicly available writing about the use of the internet for criminal purposes - that was an academic paper in 1999 - but it was the first end-to-end look at the internet, it's abuses and the creation of an action plan to combat crime using the 'net.
The book included many novel ideas, some of which have since been aired in, for example, the United Nations section looking at this area.
The world has moved on in the decade since this book appeared but the book is not out of date. There is little that needs to be updated, but there is a lot that needs to be added. That's why there will be a second edition.
This edition was taken out of print in 2022 but given the increasing talk of "cybercrime" its value has been restored. So, as with How not to be a money launderer, the first edition is now being made available as a personalised ebook, available only direct from the author.
