MEF has spoken out about the privacy debate ignited around Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail app album launch, released in an exclusive deal to 1m Samsung users on 4 July.

Concerns were raised by fellow rapper Killer Mike, real name Michael Render, after he saw what permissions the app was requesting and took to Twitter. This included permission to modify or delete the contents of your USB storage, prevent the phone from sleeping, get access to the user’s precise GPS location and to read phone status and identity. All reasonably legit requests, enabling updates and preventing your phone from sleeping while youre listening to music, for example, but Andrew Bud, chairman at the mobile trade association MEF, said that this controversy highlights that privacy is still a “toxic issue”. 

“Earlier this year,” he said, “we at MEF uncovered the extent of consumer privacy concerns in mobile applications in our Global Privacy Report.  It showed that for 70 per cent of consumers think it’s important to know exactly what data an app is collecting and what data is being shared.  So consumers understand the impact of apps on their privacy and importantly they want to have some control.”

He highlighted the need for transparency if both app developers and consumers are to get the best of out innovations in mobile entertainment. “The future of mobile music lies in understanding consumers’ tastes and behaviours, and offering them what they want, both old favourites and unexpected treats.  Half a million people have already downloaded Jay-Z’s album app, but some will not have understood the trade of information for value that took place.  What’s important in the future is that app providers make this clear, and ensure consumers understand what information is being collected and why. That’s not easy, but the industry can only build on that kind of transparency.”

According to McAfee, the Magna Carta Holy Grail app has also been targeted by a group of hacktivists who have created a malware version of the app with the aim of activating an anti-Obama, anti-PRISM message on the handsets of people who have unwittingly downloaded the fake version. Given the Magna Carta reference, this would be quite an apt place to perform a demonstration against totalitarian powers.

We have reached out to McAfee to see whether they were right.