Let's face it, privacy today is a matter of compromise than an absolute true/false attribute. Life is so complex and the number of digital apps and services required to go about our routine has increased so many folds that its near impossible to ensure 100% privacy in today's digital world.
For starters, smart-phones have become almost a necessity for the average guy. For most people, keeping up with their family and friends on WhatsApp, co-workers and/or clients on Skype/Hangouts, booking a cab using Uber/Ola, etc. are typical parts of a routine.
But if you think that using apps on your smart-phone is a huge privacy compromise, remember that its only a matter of degree. You are already compromising your privacy even when using a dumb phone - your cell-tower information, IMEI, etc. is already collected by your service provider, for instance. Using a smart-phone only increases the number of parties who have your information now and its a trade-off that most of us seem to have no problem accepting. Of course,the parties collecting the information can range in the ethics scale of shady to trustworthy and you may or may not want to trust them with your data. Moreover, mobile operating systems are also evolving to implement more granular permissions (Android-M, for instance) but even that approach will require you to trust at least one third-party such as Google or Apple or Microsoft.
You can of course go the Richard Stallman route and not even own a cell-phone, but that approach is too cumbersome and impractical for most of us to follow. Nevertheless, we should always respect and admire people like Stallman who are prepared to go to such extreme lengths to ensure gold standard in privacy. We also need to push back app developers who collect more personal information from us than is needed for delivering their service. One thing we can do here is vote using our wallets, and even pay a small premium to a developer or service provider who lives up to our ethical standards in privacy.
However, smart-phones aren't the only things that leak your personal data. Governments of all nations are becoming more and more intrusive in their data collection and National ID projects are collecting more intimate details about you such as fingerprints and other biometric details (The Aadhar scheme of Indian Government is an example). Even the great Richard Stallman cannot escape these clutches of the state since not giving out those details will result in us not getting an ID which will deprive us of basic necessities in life (like bank account, phone, Internet, electricity, etc.).
What's important is that the plebeian or the commoner should be aware of what is being collected and who is collecting it. As long as its a genuine entity who is collecting information about you in order to provide you a service, it should be fine (or rather, an acceptable compromise!). But if someone else asks for that information, it should raise some red flags. For example, if the Sudoku app on your iPhone or Android asks for telephony access or call logs, then you should know that something is amiss and shouldn't give that permission.
There are too many people who are too lethargic to bother about these little things and they just provide a blanket access to everything to anyone. Remember, its a dangerous world out there, and hackers are everywhere looking for low-hanging fruits. Misuse of personal digital information of others result in most crimes these days and it could be extremely damaging to the victims, sometimes depriving their bank accounts of their hard-earned wealth.
Keep these things in mind, learn more about privacy and technology, and stay safe!
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