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New Study Claims Data Harvesting Among Android Apps Is 'Out of Control' (techspot.com)
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.
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.
The problem with mass surveillance, is, you assume the person watching is the good guy, and the person being watched is the bad guy and it rarely turns out to be true.
Prince bone saw is a Whatsapp friend of Jareds, Jared was the one that got Khashoggi kicked out of Saudi Arabia media after a bad Q&A at a Trump press conference. Jared is also the one Prince Bone Saw lobbied to fire Rex Tillerson. Jared lost his security clearance after and incident involving lots of CIA of Prince Bone Saws opponents, and a private visit to Saudi Arabia which was followed by a lot of visisection of said opponents.
So you wouldn't want Jared to have security clearance, and access to journalist surveillance data.
But they cannot take away Trump's security clearance. You might recall the PP memo? The one that had names of US spies in Russia in it?
And six days later a bunch of Russians are arrested for 'working for a foreign power'. Obviously, Trump immediately asked for the unredacted PP memo and passed the names over. How else did Russia suddenly have the names of foreign agents 6 days into Trumps presidency?
Welcome to the surveillance world created by General Keith Alexander.
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.
None of the rest of the stuff is data tied to the user in any way.
Because any company that collects the following, and shares it with business partners, could tie a device to an individual user:
occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, referrer URL, location, and the time zone
You do understand how Facebook identifies you even before you sign up for an account, right?