Third-Party Applications: Trade-Offs in Invasive Data Sharing

"Time to Say Goodbye. Zenly will shut down in 36 days, see you on Snap Map?" - Zenly, December 28, 2022.

On February 3, 2023, one of the most well-known social media applications, Zenly, was announced to shut down. The programme that was designed to let users essentially see their added friends' location are rumored to have been battling the economic climate with other third-party social applications. Third party applications refer to softwares created that may access profile information to enhance benefits for the application (Midrack, 2021). One prime example is Zenly, in which the application itself strengthens user acquisition through the additional feature of allowing users to communicate with their friends whilst being able to track their live locations all the time. Despite that added attribute, these applications are collecting personal and/or private information from their users, which is beneficial for the means of the functioning application, but can also threaten their users' safety.