Researchers at the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University have published a survey of behind the scenes personal data sharing to third parties by mobile apps on both Android and iOS. The survey, which tested 55 free and popular apps each on both the app stores, looked for apps that shared personal, behavioral and location data. 73% of Android apps shared personal informations like email address with third parties, while 93% of the Android apps tested connected to safemovedm.com domain, which is possibly due to a background process on Android phones. Meanwhile 47% of iOS apps shared geo coordinates and other location data with third parties. On an average, Android apps send potentially private data to 3.1 third party domains, while iOS apps connected to 2.6 domains. Overall, Android apps were more likely than iOS apps to share personally identifying information as only 16% of iOS apps shared email addresses or username. On the other hand only 33% of Android apps shared location data, including geo-coordinates, with third parties, relatively less than iOS. Interestingly, 3 out of 30 medical and health fitness category apps shared medically related user inputs with a third party. Note that, other than Google and Apple, no other third-party domain in the study received data from more than 14% of the apps tested. Receiving private data: Finally, the third-party domains that receive sensitive data from the most apps are Google.com (36% of apps), Googleapis.com (18%), Apple.com (17%), and Facebook.com (14%). This is most likely used for services…
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