With app privacy labels now available for many of the App Store’s top apps, pCloud earlier this month took a look at the most “invasive” apps that collect the most user data.
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It will come as no surprise to many that Instagram and Facebook share most of the data with third-party advertisers, collecting information about purchases, location, contact details, user content, search history, browsing history and more.
Instagram collects 79 percent of personal data, while Facebook collects 57 percent. LinkedIn and Uber Eats were also serious offenders, collecting 50 percent of the data. This study was done before Google shared the app’s privacy labels for its Google Search and Chrome apps, but YouTube and YouTube Music were found to collect 43 percent of personal data to share with third parties.
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eBay, TikTok, Duolingo, Deliveroo and Trainline were all in the top 10 apps for data collection, with Reddit, Snapchat, Spotify, Pandora, ESPN and CNN in the top 20.
Every time you search for a video on YouTube, 42% of your personal data is sent elsewhere. This data tells you the types of ads you’ll see before and during the videos, as well as being sold to brands that will target you on other social media platforms. Instagram shares 79% of your data, including browsing history and personal information, with others online.
YouTube is not the worst when it comes to selling your information on YouTube. This award goes to Instagram, which shares an incredible 79% of its data with other companies. Including everything from purchase information, personal data and browsing history. It is no wonder that there is so much content promoted in your feed.
With more than 1 billion active users per month, it is worrying that Instagram is a center for sharing such a large amount of data from unknown users.
Applications that collect data for use by third parties do so for the purpose of segmentation, sharing information between different applications and websites. Applications also collect data to market their own products, with Facebook and Instagram again collecting most of the data in that category.
At the other end of the spectrum, apps that don’t collect a lot of data include Signal, Clubhouse, Netflix, Shazam, Etsy, Skype and Telegram.
Beginning with the release of iOS 14.5, Apple will begin to require applications that access the user’s advertising identifier for cross-app and website tracking to obtain express permission before using it, which can help reduce sharing third-party data.
Before downloading an app, it’s always worth checking the app’s privacy label to see exactly what data is being collected, especially in the “Data used to track you” and “Data linked to you” sections, which include collected data for third party advertising and for the developer’s own advertising or marketing.