This is why Word Flow, a keyboard released by Microsoft earlier this year, makes it a point to state in its support page that the app is built to avoid logging sensitive information, including email addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers (additionally, Word Flow lets users instantly shut off keystroke logging with the tap of a single button).Īnother concern is how this data is kept secure. "If somebody takes a look at what kind of keystrokes you were making, they can find out that you typed in a URL … and then they figure out the username that you typed in and the password," said Gerald Friedland, who works on technical privacy research at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley. "And I imagine this is how a lot of these companies expect to make their money."Īnd even among companies with no plans to share user data or use its data to target ads, there are concerns regarding just how much information they are collecting. "There certainly is a lot of aggregated data they could be gathering, at the very least, about what people search for and in what parts of the world they search for certain things," Brail said. This data is used to recommend certain content to users, and that includes "targeted advertisements or other promotions." The privacy policy for Giphy Keys, which just launched this month, has similar wording. The privacy policy for Riffsy, Gif Keyboard's parent company, states that the app collects data on user content and conduct.
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This keyboard, which lets users quickly search for animated images, is free and does not show users advertisements, but one day, it might. Gif Keyboard operates in a similar manner. For example, logged in SwiftKey users let the keyboard analyze "the words and phrases" they use for the sake of "personalization" and "prediction synchronization," according to SwiftKey's privacy policy. It's especially concerning among keyboard apps that give users the ability to create accounts for the sake of personalizing the product. "But if they're sharing data with third parties or they're aggregating data for other purposes, maybe there are concerns that people should have." "If all they're doing is transmitting data back to themselves so they can improve their product … maybe that's fine," said Tony Anscombe Sr., security evangelist with AVG Technologies, a security company. But not all keyboard developers stop there. This means that the experts at Bitmoji analyze the data of their users in bulk and then use that information to create new features or fix any issues that users may be encountering. Some keyboard apps, such as the Bitmoji Keyboard, don't do much with your data beyond anonymizing it and using it to improve the product. What keyboard apps do with the data you type all depends on the developer, and you have to dive deep into these companies' privacy policies to figure out what they plan to do with your keystrokes. "Who is that 'someone else,' and what else could they do?" It's written by someone else," said Greg Brail, a data security expert with Apigee, an API management company.
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"Everything you type is being processed by code that's not written by Apple.
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