Did you know Mobile Apps Are Stealing Your Data — Even the Ones You Least Expect
According to a new research conducted by Nsoft,
we are not safe from apps on our mobiles stealing our data and
companies collect this data for different purposes. There are some apps
like Roblox, Duolingo and Candy Crush that we do not think of as
invasive to our privacy that are stealing our data even if they claim
that they do not. Candy Crush says that it gives 10% of collected data
to other companies while Duolingo says that 20% of the collected
personal data goes to other companies and the rest of the data is used
by apps for analytics and functionality.
Social media apps also
collect users’ personal data massively and some social media apps even
use 90% of the user data for app functionality for contacts and
messaging. Some of the social media apps which do this are Instagram,
LinkedIn, Messenger, TikTok, Snapchat and Threads. Meta apps share 68.8%
of users data with third parties and it is an alarming and worrisome
situation. WhatsApp Business also requires a lot of invasive information
of users (57.1%) as it doesn't have end to end encryption and Meta can
read or record messages shared within the app.
YouTube and
Amazon also take too much of user data, with YouTube sharing 31.4% of
user data to other companies and Amazon sharing 6% of user data with
third parties. YouTube is owned by Google and other Google apps like
Gmail, Google Maps and Google Play are also among the top 20 most
invasive apps which share customer data with other companies. PayPal is
the seventh most invasive app, collecting 65.7% of data for purposes
like financial information, search history, contact list, browsing
history, photos and videos.
There are some apps like weather apps
and delivery apps that need your location data no matter what but even
though Uber is on the list of invasive apps, Lyft or Doordash isn't.
After analysing it, it was found that Uber uses more specific
information for tracking than Lyft does because it needs the data to
track online activities of users. Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble
also use a lot of personal information because it is needed for a chance
at love or even romancing scams.
If you want apps to not collect your private information, make sure to read all the privacy reports and terms and conditions of the app before downloading it. It is also good if you delete extra apps from your mobile phone that you haven't used in a while.
