At MacRumors, Juli Clover writes:
As noted by The Washington Post, there have been warnings about NameDrop popping up on Facebook. Police departments in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Ohio, and other states have been suggesting that contact information can be shared “just by bringing your phones close together.”
The information shared by the police departments isn’t incorrect, but it insinuates that NameDrop is a privacy risk, which is patently wrong.
Unfortunately, thanks to the nature of viral social sharing and uncritical, clickbait coverage from the likes of CBS News and USA Today, I’m already having to correct non-techie friends about the issue.
If anyone raises the topic with you, point out that NameDrop requires devices to be so close that they’re almost touching, so it’s implausible that it would be triggered inadvertently. More importantly, you must initiate the data transfer by tapping a button to share your contact information and receive the other person’s, or just receive theirs.
There are plenty of legitimate privacy and security concerns associated with our iPhones, as we’ve noted in “The New York Times Reveals How Completely Our Every Move Is Tracked” (19 December 2019) and “How a Thief with Your iPhone Passcode Can Ruin Your Digital Life,” 26 February 2023. NameDrop isn’t one of them, and the institutions fomenting paranoia around it should be ashamed.
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