Spyware Takes on a Whole New Meaning for iPhone and Android Users

We all know what spyware is if you use a home computer. It's software that collects information from your computer and sends it to a sinister entity without your knowledge. Spyware can even go as far as logging your keystrokes to steal passwords from you.

Now smart phone users must worry about these same principles invading their iPhones, Androids, Windows, and Palm phones. These aps are cleaver going as far as turning on microphones and cameras to record your activities.

A new class of smartphone app has emerged that uses the microphone built into your phone as a covert listening device -- a "bug," in common parlance.

But according to app makers, it's not a bug. It's a feature!

The apps use ambient sounds to figure out what you're paying attention to. It's the next best thing to reading your mind.

Your phone is listening

The issue was brought to the world's attention recently on a podcast called This Week in Tech. Host Leo Laporte and his panel shocked listeners by unmasking three popular apps that activate your phone's microphone to collect sound patterns from inside your home, meeting, office or wherever you are.

The apps are Color, Shopkick and IntoNow, all of which activate the microphones in users' iPhone or Android devices in order to gather contextual information that provides some benefit to the user.

If these applications are knowingly providing this information to companies, what other applications aren't being this honest about the capabilities of the application?

Could the federal government be behind applications like this? In case you don't know, the Obama administration argued for the power to track Americans using their cell phones arguing that Americans give up any reasonable expectation of privacy when they use a cell phone.