As has already happened in recent weeks with the Christmas Cashback program, which has seen the proliferation of absolutely useless apps and in some cases even paid, even for the Cashback Lottery that will start on January 1, 2021 (maybe) are popping up like mushrooms several apps both on the Android Play Store and the iOS App Store. But are they useful? And are they safe?
The question is more than legitimate, given the precedent of Cashback apps that, at best, are simple calculators that only calculate 10% of the purchase amount. Also in this case, on the other hand, the functioning of the Cashback Lottery is so simple that it is not clear what an app can offer the user and, consequently, why the user has to install it accepting the privacy policy and granting the app access to some functions of his smartphone. It must be said, however, that unlike what happened with the State Cashback apps, there are no paid apps among those for the Lottery of Receipts, and they are all free.
Lottery of Receipts: what apps do
Searching the Play Store for “Lottery of Receipts”, there are about ten apps that are strictly related to the government raffle. Doing the same search on Apple’s App Store, you can find a couple of them. All of the apps available at the moment are free, developed in Italy and are still in their very first versions: in fact, they have all popped up on the stores since early December.
What do these apps do? Almost all of them allow the user to connect from inside the app to the official portal of the Scontrini Lottery and generate lottery codes (a maximum of ten can be created). In some cases it is possible to generate the code directly within the app. The codes are then saved inside in a kind of wallet that can be opened at the time of need. That is, when we’re making a purchase and need to show our code to the merchant.
Some apps also allow you to check if we’ve won one of the draws, but the actual functioning of this feature is obviously not verifiable at the moment because the Lottery hasn’t started yet. Finally, there are some apps that install a widget that shows your lottery codes directly on your smartphone’s home screen.
Lottery apps: are they really useful?
So before asking if these apps are safe you should ask yourself if they are useful. The answer depends on the individual user: having the codes available on an app for someone, particularly lazy, could be an advantage. For everyone else, it’s enough to take a picture of the code and keep it in the smartphone’s gallery.
Smart people could, with little effort, create a folder of code photos (on Google Drive or any other cloud service) and place it on the smartphone’s home screen.
As far as code verification is concerned, however, it’s hard to find any use for these apps: if we’ve won, in fact, we’ll still be alerted by the same Lottery of Scontrini platform via SMS, email or instant messaging and, later, we’ll receive a registered AR or certified email message.
It’s very interesting to look at the reviews of these apps, which are divided between 5 stars full of enthusiasm and 1 itself full of disdain. In the case of a negative review, there is no shortage of accusations by some developer against those who put a star: “It’s a fake review, you put 5 stars on a competing app”.
There are also those who, after putting 1 star, accuse those who put 5 of having left a fake review.
App Lotteria degli Scontrini: sono sicure?
Come tutte le app, di qualsiasi tipo, bisogna sempre tenere in considerazione il fatto che, quando le usiamo, stiamo regalando i nostri dati a chi le ha sviluppate. E’ fondamentale, quindi, leggere bene la privacy policy dell’app e controllare quali autorizzazioni chiedono le app in fase di installazione.
La policy privacy cambia per ogni app, ma ne abbiamo trovata più di una copiata e incollata da policy standard, addirittura estere e senza alcun riferimento alla normativa italiana. In alcuni casi la policy non c’è neanche: se l’utente cerca di leggerla viene spedito sul sito Web dello sviluppatore.
In un caso, facendo click sulla privacy policy dell’app viene mostrata quella di un’altra app dedicata al calcolo del Reddito di Cittadinanza e, in ogni caso, anche questa è in inglese e non fa riferimento alla normativa italiana ma è creata addirittura tramite un “App Privacy Policy Generator“. In one case on the app’s page on the Play Store there is no mention of the privacy management policy.
As for the permissions requested by the app, instead, they all require the one to access the network (justified, to connect and generate the codes) and the one to access the smartphone’s memory (justified, to save the codes, but potentially risky because the app can read our files).
Some apps ask for access to our photos and videos, and some even ask permission to take photos and record videos via the smartphone’s camera. Entrambe le applicazioni sono assolutamente ingiustificabili, visti i fini e le funzioni delle app.
App Lotteria degli Scontrini: il nostro suggerimento
Partendo dal presupposto che, come vi abbiamo già spiegato, tutte queste app non fanno nulla di più di quanto l’utente potrebbe fare da solo in pochi click o pochi tap, la scelta di installarne una o di non farlo dipende semplicemente da quanto l’utente tiene alla propria privacy.
Chi vuole usare una di queste app, però, farebbe bene innanzitutto a scegliere quella con la privacy policy più esplicita, chiara e più “stretta“. E’ invece quasi un obbligo (e non solo con queste app, ma con tutte) concedere le autorizzazioni richieste solo mentre si usa l’app e non sempre, anche in background.