10 Women Friendly Industries of India

The modern day’s empowered women are on a mission to conquer the world and are giving stiff competition of men in every possible field. But unfortunately, not all the industries are female friendly and offer the same perks for greater work-life balance.

Here is a list of female-friendly industries that offers flexible working hours, good maternity policies, help with child care and most of all, healthy working environment, as listed by Ankita Shreeram on ItsMyascent.

#10. Education:

Teaching is a career that screams out for women’s touch. It is a line of work that is easy to get into and in addition offers utmost flexibility in terms of schedules. The demand for quality education and the subsequent rise in the number of schools and colleges across the world is bound to create new opportunities for women who aspire to utilize their time effectively.

#9. Sports:

Sports may seem like a dubious choice for many, but the fact is that, it is a highly lucrative career option that offers stardom and fame. With the emergence of youth icons such as Mary Kom or Saina Nehwal, and increased backing by Government, a large number of women definitely ought to be encouraged to take up this field as a viable career option.  

#8. Human Resource:

This industry has been traditionally dominated by women. The percentage of men working in this profession is very little, with most of them occupying the top notch positions, while the lower level is predominantly under the control of females.

HR is a profession that craves for the ability to understand the underlying issues, face the challenges, and respond to them rationally, that are traits most women are intrinsically born with. The ability to apply their inherent skills to take tough decisions and manage emotions can be an added bonus for women in this profession.

#7. Food & Hospitality:

This field provides an opportunity to unleash women’s touch and creative potential to the highest degree. It is a good career that offers a high degree of flexibility and autonomy, and in addition, does not require much investment.

Women’s inherent flair to establish constructive relationships with the customers and management capabilities can prove its worth in this line of work. 

#6. Health & Fitness:

This field is in fact the best line of work for the women. Opportunities in this field are plenty, especially in health related sectors such as beauty, physiology or fitness. Kindhearted, intuitive and people centric nature of women can be a big plus in this industry. Though the initial years can be quite challenging, the flexible and accommodative nature of this field makes it an ideal and the most desirable career option for women.

#5. Social Work:

Women are generally caring, loving and compassionate by nature, which makes them a perfect-fit for this profession. Here they get do a lot of service to the humanity, especially the underprivileged.

Over the past decade the number of women in this field has risen drastically and the rise is primarily attributed to the higher intensity of social service needs. This trend towards sharp employment growth is expected to continue in the coming years.

#4. Entrepreneurship:

Presently, an increasing number of women are turning to entrepreneurship in a pursuit for greater flexibility. Artistic entrepreneurship is currently the booming line of work for women that are offering autonomy and good income opportunities.

Women have a greater chance of being successful in this field due to the fact that most women have a strong academic background, tend to be neither pushy nor rude and most of all, have a strong drive for initiating activities.

#3. Fashion and Style:

Fashion and style has always been and shall continue to be the most desirable field for women.

This field demands artistic flair and creativity that comes naturally to most females. This is an ideal option for women, since it is something they generally enjoy and understand to minute details. Flexibility and work-life balance are other perks of this field, which most women are craving for.

#2. Public Relations and Marketing:

This is an ideal profession for women because they have a natural flair for keeping others happy. The work-life balance, huge pay packages and most of the autonomy make this the most sought after field by women in the job market.

#1. Media:

Media is a glamorous and promising field, especially for women. This field demands creativity, intelligence, good communication and most of all, the artistic flair, which most women are inherently born with. Huge pay packages and the added perks are some of the factors that are luring women into this field.

 

Four Young Indians Create a True ‘Smartwatch’ Before Apple

Off late, wrist watches have changed their image from a necessary time tracking device to an accessory, which doubles as a phone. It not only tells time but notifies you on incoming calls, previews the text messages, reads mails and a lot more.

However, none of these “Smartwatches” are not exact replica of a phone. They sync with the phone through Bluetooth and works accordingly. But many tech titans including Apple and Samsung are reportedly on final stages of developing Smartwatch, which is said to be the new ‘hot gadget,’ and a ‘killer of Smartphones.’

But before all of them, here is a watch developed by four Indian youngsters, which according to the developers, is a true wearable phone with size and design of a wristwatch, or a “Smartwatch”, reports TOI.

The four lads behind the innovative gadget are three 24-year olds and a school boy- software developer Ankit Pradhan, communications professional Pavneet Singh Puri, lawyer Apurva Sukant and Siddhant Vats, a 17-year old schoolboy the youngest member in the team. Four of them have formed their company, Androidly Systems Private Limited

“There are other such products in the market, but they mostly sync with Smartphones and are not phones in themselves. We have ported Android on to a much smaller board and built a wearable phone,” says Sukant, a Beethoven fan who is the resident designer of the group.

The watch with 2-inch screen has a 2-mega pixel camera and runs on an older version of android operating system. The device is built with a speaker and mic. Besides, the end of the wrist-strap can be plugged into a USB socket to charge the phone as well as to be used as a storage device. According to the developers, the device will be available in Indian markets from March 15 as well as abroad and each set will cost 12000.

The smart watches have been around more than a decade but it has failed to grab the attention as the lucrative touch phones ruled with their innovative designs, finish and software. Apart from the Indian quartet, other multinational companies like Apple and Samsung are also working on the similar, wearable devices with some of them like pebble, already available in the market.

For instance, wearable devices like Sony SmartWatch, LG Watch Phone, Samsung Cell-Phone Wristwatch and Nike+Fuelband were some of the popular ones. But none of them turned out to create a new space in the market.

The story of the device named to be ‘Androidly’ is quite interesting. “We have all been friends for years now and would hang out at Rajinder da Dhaba a lot. I was a member of my college student council then and was getting a lot of calls regarding the college fest. That day, my phone rang at a time when my hands were dripping with chicken curry. And I just couldn’t retrieve it from my pocket,” says Puri, who had been working two jobs in Melbourne during the development stage of the Smartwatch.

Hailing from middle-class backgrounds, the youngsters started their own company will little help from home. Currently, they are on the process of finding investors to have a close contact with Chinese manufacturers.

 

Ten Most Famous Business Cards Of Legends

In an era of Facebook, iPhone and Smartphones; the humble business card is at the brim of turning outdated. But once, the captivating business cards, of rich and famous tech tycoons, celebrities and politicians have marked a remarkable change from being pragmatic to giving an insight into their personality sticking to an old-fashioned manner but in their own unique style.

Here are the 10 famous business cards that belong to the some tech titans and celebrities which everyone would love to have a look at.

#10 Steve Jobs

There was a time when walkman was the future and iPod was outlandish. At that point of time, Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple was in immediate need of business card to flourish his business. Following, he came up with a variety of business cards in a simplistic and unique manner. He started his creation of business cards from 1979.

#9 Eric Schimdt

Eric Schimdt, according to his card holds the title of “Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO of Google”. Schimdt’s card was actually a talk of the town soon after it was created due to its typo errors. It created hype in the media because of his power and designation as the Search Giant’s CEO.

#8 Mark Zuckerberg

“I’m CEO, Bitch”, Facebook CEO and billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, shows the world that you can get away with anything and everything when you’re the boss. The story of this title has been the talk of the town since 2009. The film “the Social Network”, based on Ben Mezrich’s book, announced the phrase to the world. Through his card, he shows that you’re the boss and can put anything on the card and no one can deny it. It marks a bold statement and presents an impression of radicalism or lack of concern and considered expression.

#7 Bill Gates

The colorful visually-appealing business card introduced by Microsoft founder and billionaire, Bill Gates. Back then, Microsoft was headquartered in Albuquerque. The card introduces the founder with a full title.  He might not carry the prestige of a former President, but his contributions to the society are far-reaching. The business card design and possibilities reached a matured stage where he has made the best use of it.

#6 Steve Wozniak

One of the coolest and most modern business cards we’ve ever seen comes from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The card is made of stainless steel with creative design and laser etching. It is custom made and includes designs, both etched and printed. It is sleek, smooth sexy lines wrapped around future-proof metal.

#5 Evan Williams

Evan Williams, the founder of several internet companies, is known to be the creator of two most popular internet websites, Blogger and Twitter. Williams’ business card carries a logo of Twitter on one side along with his name, designation and the company name where he has looked forward to make it simple. It was created soon after he was raised as the CEO of the social networking site, Twitter.

#4 Barack Obama

The Senatorial business card of Barack Obama presents a rare archive of the 2008 Presidential elections. Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois was elected as the first African American President of the United Sates. The business card carries the patriotic raised seal of a gold eagle and his name, designation and office details as United States Senator. It guarantees authenticity as it comes with a certificate.

#3 Walt Disney

The animation giant, Walt Disney, popularly known as Disney, created a business card hand-drawn which obviously sounds and appeals cool. It provided a taste of his passion and illustrative skills on the card which shows a vivid example of who he is and what he does.

#2 Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga teamed up with Polaroid in 2011 with an aim to restore the famous brand. The company designed a business card for the pop-music star which is quite innovative and catchy. It is designed with a logo of the company in bold characters alongside her name and designation as “Creative Director”. The texts, probably supposed to be the company’s address is striked off whch have made it catchy.

#1 Albert Einstein

Known to be the father of modern Physics, Albert Einstein, had a surprisingly plain business card which hardly had any justice to his theories, his personality nor his appearance. He has mainly focused on the simplicity of the card, rather than revealing his identity and profession.

Twenty Biggest Websites In The World

From online candy sales to a website to search other website, everyone has got a website under their name these days. The popularity of a website is the measure of visitors it has garnered, and it is what draws the defining lines between being big and being meager. If you were thinking Google is the biggest website in the world, you are wrong! It is another one from USA. comScore, the digital analytics company came up with the list of most popular Website in the world. If you are curious to know which ones found their way up in the ladder, then here are the 20 biggest websites in the world, compiled by Business Insider.

#20 Amazon.com 163 Million Unique Visitors

The company: Amazon.com is the world’s largest online retailer. Started as an online bookstore, it soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his “regret minimization framework”, which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the internet business boom during that time. Amazon was originally founded in Bezos’ garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The company also produces consumer electronics—notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire Tablet—and is a major provider of cloud computing services.

#19 Sina.com.cn 169 Million Visitors

Sina.com is the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal. It is run by Sina Corporation, which was founded in 1999. Sina was recognized by Southern Weekend as the “Chinese Language Media of the Year” for 2003 and in the early 2000s, it was known as the “Yahoo of China.” Sina launched a microblogging service Weibo in 2009, and has grown to more than 400 million users. Sina has said it has more than 60,000 verified accounts, consisting of celebrities, sports stars and other VIPs. The top 100 users now have over 180 million followers combined.

#18 WordPress.com 170.9 Million Visitors

WordPress.com is a blog web hosting service provider owned by Automattic, and powered by the open source WordPress software. WordPress has been able to attract users by offering dead-simple tools for blogging and web publishing. Given that it’s open source, WordPress has the upper hand on other platforms that require licensing fees.

There are nearly 60 million WordPress.com sites, which receive more than 100 million pageviews per day. Everyday over one million new articles and over one million comments are published. Some notable clients include CNN, CBS, BBC, Reuters, Sony and Volkswagen. In September 2010, it was announced that Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft’s blogging service, would be closing, and that Microsoft would instead be partnering with WordPress.com for blogging services.

#17 Apple.com – 171.7 Million Unique Visitors

Apple.com is online destination for Apple products and software. It is the domain for the Apple Store as well as customer support pages for all Apple products. It’s bookmarked as the default homepage on Safari browser that is the default browser in all Apple Internet-connected products which are owned by countless number of people already.

#16 Sohu.com – 175.8 Million Unique Visitors

Started in 1997 as the country’s first online search company, Sohu.com is a Chinese portal and search engine. It offers advertising, online multiplayer gaming and other services. Sohu was ranked as the world’s 3rd and 12th fastest-growing company by Fortune in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

#15 Bing.com – 184 Million Unique Visitors

Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has aggressively advertised Bing, and made huge efforts to make the search engine much easier to use, with the addition of things like the social sidebar and improved algorithms. Microsoft also pays other Websites to link to Bing.
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[6 hat it is: Web search engine.

#14 Twitter.com – 189.8 Million Unique Visitors

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as “the SMS of the Internet.”

The presence of news organizations, politicians, and other industry-specific experts have turned Twitter into the ultimate source of information.

#13 Taobao.com – 207 Million Unique Visitors

Taobao.com is Chinese marketplace for clothing, accessories, jewelry, food, electronics, and more, similar to eBay and Amazon, operated by Alibaba Group. Founded by Alibaba Group in May 10, 2003, it facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly cater to consumers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

#12 Ask.com – 218.4 Million Unique Visitors

Ask is a question answering focused web search engine powered by Google. It founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.

#11 Blogger.com – 229.9 Million Unique Visitors

Blogger.com is one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools; it is credited for helping popularize the format. It allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a sub domain of blogspot.com.

#10 MSN.com – 254.1 Million Unique Visitors

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.

MSN was once a simple online service for Windows 95, an early experiment at interactive multimedia content on the Internet, and one of the most popular dial-up Internet service providers. Today, MSN is primarily a popular Internet portal.

#9 Baidu – 268.7 Million Unique Visitors

Baidu is a Chinese web Services Company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing. It offers many services, including a Chinese language search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu also offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. Baidu was established in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu.

Baidu is one of China’s most popular search engines. It employs thousands of China’s best engineers to continually update the quality and speed of its search engine.

#8 Microsoft.com – 271.7 Million Unique Visitors

Microsoft.com is destination for purchasing Microsoft products, and downloading MS software and updates. There are a lot of Microsoft Windows-powered computers out there, and most of them come with Microsoft.com bookmarked for customer support and lots of other functions, no wonder it’s on this list.

#7 QQ.com – 284.1 Million Unique Visitors

QQ.com is China-based search engine and portal. QQ is an abbreviation of Tencent QQ, which provides customers with a popular instant messaging software service. Due to popularity of the instant messaging software service, by 10 September 2012, there were 784 million active user accounts with approximately 100 million online at a time.

#6 Live.com – 389.5 Million Unique Visitors

Live.com is Microsoft’s new email service. It was a customizable portal launched by Microsoft in early November 2005 and it was one of the first Windows Live services to launch. Live.com lets users add RSS feeds in order to view news at a glance. Building off Microsoft’s Start.com experimental page, Live.com could be customized with Gadgets, mini-applications that could serve almost any purpose.

Some gadgets integrated with other Windows Live services, including Hotmail, Live Search, and Favorites.

#5 Wikipedia.org – 469.6 Million Unique Visitors

Wikipedia.org is simply the easy and best source of knowledge. It is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 24 million articles, over 4.1 million in the English Wikipedia, are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world.

As of February 2013, there are editions of Wikipedia in 285 languages. It has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide.

#4 Yahoo.com – 469.9 Million Unique Visitors

Yahoo.com is a search engine and platform that connects to users to other Yahoo properties, such as Yahoo Finance and Flickr. Yahoo is one of the original Web portals from the 1990s; it offers news, sports, finance, and email.

#3 YouTube.com – 721.9 Million Unique Visitors

YouTube.com is the platform for uploading, sharing, and watching user-created videos. It was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google, and the site got more popular.

#2 Google.com – 782.8 Million Unique Visitors

Google.com is web search engine, popularly known as ‘search giant’. Google entered a crowded search engine market in the late 1990s, but won because it was the fastest and had a clean design. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University.

#1 Facebook.com – 836.7 Million Unique Visitors

Facebook.com is the largest social networking site with over a billion registered users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Top 10 tips to keep your kids and teens safe online

Here are 10 tips for you to share with your youngsters, to help make sure they’re clued up about internet safety.

1. Lock down your Facebook page. Make sure your profile is only shown to your friends – not their friends too and certainly not the whole world! It’s good to check your privacy settings regularly, too, because Facebook often updates them.

2. If you don’t know someone on Facebook, don’t be tempted to accept their Friend request.

3. Don’t post anything anywhere on the internet if you don’t want the world to see it. Once you’ve uploaded something, you cannot be sure that it will stay with just the person you’ve sent it to. So if it’s private, don’t share it!

4. Never give out your address, unless your parents have said it’s safe and it’s absolutely necessary (eg. when you are requesting a delivery). And never agree to meet in person someone you’ve met online.

5. Make sure you password protect your phone or any other device you use. And lock it when you’re not using it.

6. Don’t click on suspicious-looking links. If something looks strange to you, ask a parent or teacher if it’s ok to click on it.

7. If your friend has sent you a message but it looks weird, or isn’t something they’d usually say, check with them before you open it. It could be that someone is using their account to send messages which could be infected with something nasty.

8. Always log out! Make sure you don’t leave any account open when you go away from your computer, phone or other device.

9. Follow these password rules:

• Never choose passwords which are real words you’d find in the dictionary. Use a mixture of upper and lower case letters, swap out letters for numbers, and use symbols like % and $ too.
• Make your password as long as possible. The longer it is, the harder it is to crack.
• Be creative! Never just use the name of your favourite sports team or band, or your pet’s name. They are too easy to guess, especially if you’re previously shared that information online.
• Use a different password for each website you use. If you struggle to remember them, you can use online ‘password management‘ software to save them for you. But remember to make your ‘master’ password VERY hard to crack!
• Don’t save your password to your computer if you share it with anyone. And never give anyone your password. Not even your best friend. It’s not silly to keep your password to yourself, it’s safe!

10. And finally, if it doesn’t look right, speak up! If you think something is suspicious or if you see something upsetting online, tell a parent or teacher, or report it to the website you’re trying to use.

Can you ever erase yourself from the internet?

There is no black and white answer concerning consumers’ online privacy.

More and more each day the internet infiltrates commerce and social life and consumers are becoming more aware that their personal information is becoming less and less personal.  Some websites and apps have transparent sharing policies.  Some of them state exactly what information they will use for advertising but others aren’t so clear.

 So what if one day you’re fed up? Tired of the eerie advertisements that seem to cater perfectly to your personal history, hobbies and wants? What if you want to erase your online identity with no strings attached, which brings us to the question: Once your information is on the web, does it ever really go away?

The problem with online privacy

That was the question some of the top names in tech privacy were trying to answer at Churchill Club’s “The Privacy Gap” panel on Wednesday, including Brendon Lynch, chief privacy officer at Microsoft, and Facebook’s former chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly.

“There are still people who don’t know what they’re giving up when they sign up for services,” Lynch said. “They don’t know how much value is being derived from their data.”

The general theme of the talk seemed to center around the fact that in today’s climate, there is no black and white answer concerning consumers’ online privacy. While some panelists called for major innovation in regards to online privacy – World Privacy Forum’s Pam Dixon urged that the industry needs to start looking at “privacy as a feature, not a bug” – some saw privacy as a user problem.

“If I say to a consumer, ‘I am collecting every single piece information about you but I am telling you this up front,’ and you choose to continue to use my app, that is an educated informed choice and consumers have the right to make that choice,” explained Jon Potter, president of the Application Developer’s Alliance.

The general consensus was that online privacy issues are growing and consumers’ tolerance level with companies using their private information is dwindling fast.

Even Facebook was the target of FTC privacy charges back in 2011, accusing the social networking site of deceiving their users by telling them they could keep their Facebook information private, and then allowing it to be shared and made public. They have since reached a settlement, and one of Facebook’s requirements now is to post a clear and prominent sharing notice and have users consent to having their information shared. Judging from Facebook’s over 1 billion users, most people continue to use the site despite knowing that their information is being shared and tracked.

It’s the same story with the thousands of mobile applications and other sites that share your information, essentially making your every online step traceable back to you.

These experts on privacy admit and agree that not only should there be more innovation that closes the rift between consumer privacy and sharing practices, but there also needs to be new technology surrounding deleting your data from the web.

“There needs to be an educated technological discussion about whether it’s possible to erase your data from the Internet, and what does it mean when you no longer use a website and you want to back your data out,” Potter said at the panel.

Tricks to erasing yourself from the Internet

If you don’t want to stick around for more online privacy innovation and want to clear the Internet of your data, you’re out of luck if you want an absolute erase button. For example, even after you delete your Facebook, some of your data traces may still remain, which is explained in their privacy policy.

So what can you do?

• Check out Google’s removal request tool: It allows you to ask Google to remove search results or cached content.
• Deleting accounts: When deleting accounts, you will notice that some sites simply “deactivate” it. A tip for these situations is to delete every bit of your information from these sites, then link the site to a newly-created email address, and then delete that email address (tedious, we know).
• Contact sites directly: You can also contact particular sites and companies that have your personal information and politely ask them to erase it (again, tedious).
• Do not track: AVG security software has developed a tool that allows you to opt out of tracking on most web browsers. This means that browsers like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox won’t be able to track your Internet behavior.
• Keep your identity protected: Remember, if you find false information, or are afraid that your data is being used fraudulently, signing up for an identity theft protection service can help notify you of any fraudulent activity concerning your identity.

If you’d still like to use the Internet while protecting your privacy, you’ll need to keep reading privacy policies and exercising your choice of whether to continue using a website or application knowing their sharing practices.

Until there is more innovation and maybe some uniformity surrounding online privacy, being aware of what you are sharing when signing up for a service is very important, as well as knowing that your personal data is extremely valuable.

The moral of the story? Once you’re on the Internet, it’s very difficult to leave.

#WhatsApp breached data privacy laws by storing non-user contact details

WhatsApp has been found guilty of breaching international privacy laws because it forces customers (bar those using iOS 6) to grant it access to their entire address book. It indiscriminately retains all that information, meaning millions of non-consenting, non-users have had their data given up over the years.

The announcement was made by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Dutch Data Protection Authority, which both maintain WhatsApp directly breached its privacy laws. However, the joint investigation took place in 2012, giving the company time to make some adjustments before the public ever found out — it has encrypted messages (from September 2012), strengthened its authentication process and also plans on developing manual addition of contacts. There are, however, still “outstanding issues” that the authorities intend to follow-up on, despite the instant messaging provider claiming non-users’ numbers are encrypted and that they don’t store corresponding names and emails.

WhatsApp has been dogged with security flaws since its launch, with one hacker releasing a Windows tool to show how easy it is to change user statuses in early 2012. This latest find, with even non-users being drawn into a privacy data dispute, has somewhat irked the authorities since international law clearly states data should only be kept “for so long as it is required for the fulfilment of an identification purpose”.

“This lack of choice contravenes privacy law,” said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority, in a statement. “Both users and non-users should have control over their personal data and users must be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with WhatsApp.”

It flags up an issue Facebook, Google and others are currently having to deal with: user consent, or the lack thereof.

“This case puts the spotlight on a key issue within privacy law: can the use of a service be made conditional on access being given to personal data?” Stewart Room, a partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse specialising in privacy law, told Wired.co.uk. “On my reading of the law, the EU data protection regime does recognise the legitimacy of making service use conditional in this way, but the law will expect sufficient mechanisms to be put in place to draw the user’s attention to the data access before the service commences. In other words, people need to know what they are signing up for in advance.”

It’s taken the Dutch and Canadian authorities a good few years, and plenty of warnings from the public over the app’s security issues, to carry out its investigation and apply some pressure on the US-based company. So what other less high-profile apps are getting away with more?

“I suspect that these breaches are much more common than we think, with many businesses not paying due attention to their data collection practices when developing or deploying their services,” Daniel Cooper, head of global privacy and data security at Covington and Burling, told Wired.co.uk. “Many companies simply collect data, despite having no clear business need for it, on the basis that it may be useful in the future [WhatsApp says it keeps the data on file to populate its own contact list]. This situation has not been helped by the relatively limited amount of regulatory enforcement that has occurred to date.”

So we’ll probably start seeing more cases such as these arise as attention is drawn to the issue.

With that in mind, Stewart says: “I would encourage all app developers to look at how they bring key privacy issues to the attention of users during signing-up… I expect that where there are problems these are more often the result of a lack of focus or clarity of thought, rather than a deliberate attempt to have people over. I do expect that many app developers are in a similar position to WhatsApp.”

LIAT CLARK