Centrelink sends ‘your’ data to Google unnecessarily!

What’s in a name change? Plenty. The Department of Human Services becomes ‘Services Australia’

You are enticed/pressured/not given any other option, to use government services via a smartphone app, rather than in person, over the phone or via the service provider’s web site.

There is a reason why they are pushing you to use the app.

Because Google then sells data generated from the app, where the app producer profits from this.

Mobile communications is not private nor secure, where this is another topic with many subsections, discussed elsewhere.

The ‘Australian Government’ assures you that ‘your*’ data is safe, which realistically it cannot do.

It also states that the data is protected by privacy law.

There is a huge problem there, where first of all you must be made aware that your data has been compromised, which can be covered up quite easily by your ever so honest government corporation.

You then have to make that allegation in a court of law and then prove it, no easy task there, even with a whistleblower as your sworn in witness.

With any interaction with a government service provider, one of their first directions is to tell you to download their app, but is that really safe for your privacy?

Let’s take a look at the example of Centrelink's app.

From the above screen capture of the app, the ‘Department of Human Services’ is responsible for the app, but today it no longer exists. It’s ‘gone’.

In any event the DHS programmed the app in such a manner that information from your smartphone travels to Google and Dynatrace.

So the more tech savvy will have the excuse that it’s anonymised, or unidentifiable user data, blah blah blah, but at the end of the day the data does come back to your ‘person’ via something called device fingerprinting.

So, could the Department of Human Services have programmed that app to be independent of Google, Dynatrace or any other entity?

Of course!

DuckDuckGo compiled their app without ANY trackers.

So you wanna sue the ‘Australian’ Department of Human Services?

Good luck!

* - 'Your' data is another topic in itself, not discussed here at this point in time.