Join us on 8 April from 16:00 CET for a webinar with the investigators behind "The Depth of Your Virtual Purse: What do fintech apps know about you?" - You will meet the team of reporters and researchers and get a chance to hear and ask details about the methodology, tools, findings and challenges faced along the way.
About the Webinar
The webinar discusses the making of a recent investigation - conducted by Maldita.es, Tactical Tech and SocialTIC - into how financial technology (fintech) apps focused on personal budgeting handle their users’ data privacy, but also how users themselves manage their personal information inside these apps.
More about the investigation: The Depth of Your Virtual Purse: What do fintech apps know about you?
Investigators used the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) mechanisms to obtain and analyse the types of user data collected by the apps as well as what happens to this data within and beyond the apps.
The findings were quite intriguing:
- a company handed data about the wrong user;
- an app refused initially to provide data as required by law;
- evidence of aggressive trackers accessing users’ personal data, and the use of automated user profiling mechanisms;
- sensitive personal data and private habits get shared for advertising purposes, and are sometimes transferred to countries not covered by the GDPR, such as the United States.
Join us to meet the team of reporters and researchers behind this project, and get a chance to hear and ask details about the methodology, tools, more findings and challenges faced along the way.
Date and Time
The webinar takes place on 8 April at 16:00 - 17:30 CEST (Central European Summer Time.)
Sign Up
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Speakers
Naiara Bellio - Maldita.es
Naiara is the technology editor at Spanish outlet Maldita.es and the coordinator of the section Maldita Tecnología. The section addresses disinformatioin and misinformation related to technological processes and people's digital life, as well as analyses the dissemination of information related to data protection. Naiara has worked for Agencia Efe in Madrid and Argentina and also for the digital media elDiario.es.
Laura Ranca - Tactical Tech
Laura is a researcher and trainer with Tactical Tech's Exposing the Invisible (ETI) project. She trains citizen investigators, activists, journalists and rights defenders on techniques, tools and safer methods of digital and non-digital investigations, as well as coordinates the development of the Exposing the Invisible Kit, a collaborative, self-learning resource for people and communities who feel motivated to start their own investigations.
Paul Aguilar - SocialTIC
Paul is a coordinator of the Digital Security Program at SocialTIC and a cybersecurity specialist. He assits, trains and supports activists and rights defenders in Latin America in the development of digital security strategies. Paul is an advocate of free and open source technologies.
Join Us and Participate
We will talk about how the investigation came to be, how the methodology was designed and adapted along the way, the challenges faced from different sides and the intriguing findings uncovered.
We will also discuss the ways forward, how such research can be replicated, and what app users themselves could and should do to gain more awareness of their digital rights and claim control over their data.
We will invite you - the participants - not just to listen but to join this discussion and bring your own questions and experiences to the table.
The link to the online session will be provided by email one day in advance to participants who sign up.
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Please note that the talk will be recorded.
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Contact for questions about the event: eti@tacticaltech.org (GPG Key / fingerprint: BD30 C622 D030 FCF1 38EC C26D DD04 627E 1411 0C02).
Related Resources
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Investigation report in English: "The Depth of Your Virtual Purse: What do fintech apps know about you?", published by Exposing the Invisible, Tactical Tech, March 2022.
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Investigation report in Spanish (pdf.): "Tu cartera ya no está en tu bolsillo, sino en tu móvil: ¿qué saben de ti las aplicaciones de control de gastos?", Maldita.es, March 2022.
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Spanish-language reporting on the investigation by Maldita.es, in three parts: part 1; part 2; part 3.