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Android Privacy Security Software United Kingdom United States

New Study Claims Data Harvesting Among Android Apps Is 'Out of Control' (techspot.com) 97

Posted by BeauHD from the behind-the-scenes dept.
A new study from Oxford University revealed that almost 90 percent of free apps on the Google Play store share data with Alphabet. "The researchers, who analyzed 959,000 apps from the U.S. and UK Google Play stores, said data harvesting and sharing by mobile apps was now 'out of control,'" reports TechSpot. "'We find that most apps contain third party tracking, and the distribution of trackers is long-tailed with several highly dominant trackers accounting for a large portion of the coverage,' reads the report." From the report: It's revealed that most of the apps, 88.4 percent, could share data with companies owned by Google parent Alphabet. Next came a firm that's no stranger to data sharing controversies, Facebook (42.5 percent), followed by Twitter (33.8 percent), Verizon (26.27 percent), Microsoft (22.75 percent), and Amazon (17.91 percent). [I]nformation shared by these third-party apps can include age, gender, location, and information about a user's other installed apps. The data "enables construction of detailed profiles about individuals, which could include inferences about shopping habits, socio-economic class or likely political opinions."

Big firms then use the data for a variety of purposes, such as credit scoring and for targeting political messages, but its main use is often ad targeting. Not surprising, given that revenue from online advertising is now over $59 billion per year. According to the research, the average app transfers data to five tracker companies, which pass the data on to larger firms. The biggest culprits are news apps and those aimed at children, both of which tend to have the most third-party trackers associated with them.
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New Study Claims Data Harvesting Among Android Apps Is 'Out of Control' More

New Study Claims Data Harvesting Among Android Apps Is 'Out of Control'

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  • "Control" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @10:15PM (#57533349)
    Who would think that it would be "under control" to begin with? Android is primarily a data-gathering platform for Google. Always has been. If you're under the incorrect assumption that it's not, that's your fault.

    • When something overtly evil done by a small amount of people (Google in this example) disproportionately victimizes a much larger amount of people (all Android users and everyone who knows an Android user, or anyone who knows someone who knows someone who knows an Android user in this example) you have to really seriously be warped, both morally and intellectually, to be able to convince yourself that the majority party is the one at fault.

  • Network is open (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The whole issue with Android is the network has no firewall, by default everything gets access to the Internet.

    In permissions it says you are giving the *app* permission, but the app isn't getting permission, the *company* making the app is. The first thing they do is to send all the data you just gave permission for to the parent company's servers.

    And the built in apps get a free ride. On a lot of Android devices these days there is shitload of Google spyware, Microsoft spyware, Facebook spyware, and often

    • The whole issue with Android is the network has no firewall, by default everything gets access to the Internet.

      iptables works in Android the same as it does any Linux operating system.

      iptables can be used to prevent network access from apps (user accounts) you don't want to access the network. Afwall for example is just a front end to iptables and is very much able to prevent access to the network to apps you don't want to have access.

      In permissions it says you are giving the *app* permission, but the app isn't getting permission, the *company* making the app is. The first thing they do is to send all the data you just gave permission for to the parent company's servers.

      User space created for the app to execute in is getting the permission.

      And the built in apps get a free ride. On a lot of Android devices these days there is shitload of Google spyware, Microsoft spyware, Facebook spyware, and often some Chinese spyware, all pre-installed, all waiting for you to feed in your data to be sent off to parent HQ.

      My own personal view it's insane to use an unmodified Android phone with Google play services installed. There

      • iptables works in Android the same as it does any Linux operating system.

        Yeah - My Grandma uses iptables all the time.

        I've always enjoyed Slashdotters defend Operating System Issues by telling everyone that they have to do things like use ipTables, go into services and dick with registries, open up terminal or command prompts, root their devices, Learn Unix. and on and on and on and on.

        Yeah - you and I can do that stuff. 99.999999 percent of users have no idea of what we are talking about, have no intentions of becoming a power user, so this means nothing at all to them.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by nnull ( 1148259 )

        Please find me a phone that works with LineageOS that allows me to root it and also doesn't get gimped after you root it and install another rom. And also, the phone can't be more than a year old. So far, I have a slightly gimped LGV20 that I use with f-droid only.

        The manufacturers have joined in on all this data gathering madness and and doing everything they can to prevent you from stopping it. Samsung has gimped all their US products from being rooted or force you to wait seven days to even attempt it (I

  • no shit (Score:3)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @10:42PM (#57533433)

    Analytics and ads and services.
    90% of Android apps in the play store contain the text "google.com"
    That's all they checked. No data was checked, no source code looked at. They searched the APK files for host names.

    What's slightly more concerning is nearly half of them potentially talk to Facebook. You already have a Google account and your phone is already sending data to the Play Store. You already know Google is is collecting analytics from your app on behalf on the developer.
    Why the hell do all these apps need to talk to Facebook?

    • Why the hell do all these apps need to talk to Facebook?

      Most benign reason, they support FB's single-signon.

      And Google, by default, sends very little data to the app store.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      None of this is at all surprising. Google provides free tools to gather anonymous stats about app usage, and most developers enable them because it costs them nothing to do so.

      Users seem to like social media integration and app developers know that sharing stuff on social media (e.g. stats from your last bike ride) is free advertising for their app, so build in support for popular networks.

      The link claiming that this allows developers to create profiles of individuals is paywalled. Based on how flimsy their

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Data sharing... (Score:4, Informative)

    by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @10:46PM (#57533449)

    On this note, perhaps Slashdot should start sharing information with themselves about what they posted yesterday [slashdot.org].

  • I put a firewall on my phone a while ago (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @11:15PM (#57533533)
    It told me which app wanted to access the network, where they connected to, and the time.

    Most shocking? My flashlight app, which I hadn't used in 6 months, was connecting every 30 seconds or so.

    Needless to say that sucker got uninstalled ASAP, as did a handful of other apps.

    Sad to say I had to uninstall the firewall, it was sucking up my battery like nobodies business. But I haven't installed any apps since then.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      You could turn off the wifi and cellular if not needed. That is what I do on my iPhone 4S. Also, it saves a lot battery power. Speaking of iOS, is there a firewall app for it like in v9.3.5?

    • Most shocking? My flashlight app, which I hadn't used in 6 months, was connecting every 30 seconds or so.

      Could someone please explain to me why this needs to be an app? Smart phones have been around for... what... a decade, and we still need "apps" for these kinds of features?

      I honestly don't know, as I don't own a smart phone.

      • The flashlight app I use turns on the screen, not the camera LED. It allows for custom colors, so I can tune it to an accurate 3200K color from the default 6500K blue most screens are by default when full on (white).

  • What do you expect (Score:3)

    by jabberw0k ( 62554 ) on Thursday October 25, 2018 @12:54AM (#57533791) Homepage Journal
    from proprietary closed-source programs, in a proprietary environment on proprietary hardware? The fact that free software like the Linux kernel is in the mix is irrelevant -- all the other layers cannot be audited. Then because computers are scary, it is called "smart" and named a "telephone" so you think it's safe. Why any computer-savvy person would even want to be in the same room as one of these gadgets -- much less carry one, much less pay for the privilege -- beggars belief.

  • it's only because you are the product.

    It's not surprising that this is happening. Software development still costs money. The people that do it are still expecting to get rich or at least comfortably middle class. One way or another you have to bring consumers that expect software to be free, together with developers that expect to make money off the effort.

    So we now find ourselves in a place where we have free as in beer software, and the developers neglect to mention it does everything short of giving you

  • I mean, I hate ads as much as the next guy, but I still prefer ads that align with my interests or are relevant to me somehow than those that are not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      Just as a heads up, modding down doesn't really answer the question, although I figure that whichever mod decided to do that is probably too blinded by their own worldview to realize that by simply modding down instead of answering, they have basically admitted they would rather censor an oppositional viewpoint than try and rationally debate it.

      So let's give this a head start, shall we?

      The only objection I have ever seen that makes any sense about targetted ads is the argument that they can be intrusi

  • Society is out of control. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:59AM (#57534327)

    "...data harvesting and sharing by mobile apps was now 'out of control'..."

    No, apps are not "out of control". A society that gladly accepts this shit is the one out of control. Ignorance has practically begged for the destruction of privacy.

    To the society that has welcomed an Orwellian future, don't bother asking what year it is anymore. It's 1984. It's always going to be 1984, because that's what you want.


  • 1) Stop using Google play.
    2) Only use Fdroid and
    3) vanilla stock AOSP build without Google's spyware, if you choose to use Android Linux.
  • Google Navigate explicitly sends a trace of your route back to Google every time you use it... if you don't have problem with Google knowing every place you've been, why should you have a problem with them collecting other data? (Has the Google Navigate data been used against anyone in court yet?)

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