{"id":3533,"date":"2018-10-23T14:04:07","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T14:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/mobile-app-data-sharing-out-of-control\/"},"modified":"2018-10-23T14:04:07","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T14:04:07","slug":"mobile-app-data-sharing-out-of-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/mobile-app-data-sharing-out-of-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile app data sharing ‘out of control’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Data harvesting and sharing by mobile apps is “out of control”, University of Oxford researchers have warned.<\/p>\n

Nearly 90% of free apps on the Google Play store share data with Google parent company Alphabet, the Financial Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Google said it had clear policies for how developers could handle data, and that the research had mischaracterised some “ordinary functions” of apps.<\/p>\n

“If an app violates our policies, we take action,” the online giant said.<\/p>\n

Many free apps track behaviour across many different digital services, which lets companies build up a detailed profile of people using the app.<\/p>\n

This data can include age, gender, location, and information about other apps on a smartphone.<\/p>\n

The data can then be used for a number of purposes including targeted advertising, credit scoring, or targeted political campaign messages, the researchers said in a paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Revenues from online advertising earn more than $59bn (\u00a345bn) per year in the US alone, they said. <\/p>\n

And many people are not aware how data flows from smartphones to advertising groups, data brokers and other intermediaries, researcher Reuben Binns told the FT.<\/p>\n

“It feels like this legitimate business model has gone completely out of control and created a kind of chaotic industry that is not understood by the people who are most affected by it,” Mr Binns said.<\/p>\n

Information pool<\/h2>\n

Data tended to get concentrated by big companies and their subsidiaries.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that more than 88% of free apps on Google Play shared information with firms owned by Alphabet.<\/p>\n

Nearly 43% of apps shared data with Facebook, while significant percentages shared data with Twitter, Verizon, Microsoft and Amazon firms.<\/p>\n

News apps – and apps aimed at children – shared information with the largest number of trackers, they found.<\/p>\n

Google said: “Across Google and in Google Play we have clear policies and guidelines for how developers and third-party apps can handle data and we require developers to be transparent and ask for user permission. If an app violates our policies, we take action.”<\/p>\n

Google added that it disagreed with the methodology of the study.<\/p>\n

“It mischaracterises ordinary functional services like crash reporting and analytics, and how apps share data to deliver those services,” Google said.<\/p>\n

But campaigner Frederike Kaltheuner from Privacy International said that it has become “impossible” for the average user to understand how their data is being used, and to opt out.<\/p>\n

“Companies track people… and they use this data to profile and then target people in ways that most of us would find intrusive and very surprising,” she said.<\/p>\n

“This is no longer about the need to collect data to show ‘relevant ads’ – this is about profit maximisation at the expense of people’s fundamental rights,” Ms Kaltheuner added.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright LIONEL BONAVENTURE\/Getty Images Data harvesting and sharing by mobile apps is “out of control”, University of Oxford researchers have warned. Nearly 90% of free apps on the Google Play store share data with Google parent company Alphabet, the Financial Times reported. Google said it had clear policies for how developers could handle data, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}