The privacy tags of iPhone apps have been a real revelation in showing how much of our personal data is accessed by certain apps. If you’ve ever wondered which apps collect and share the most data, cloud storage company pCloud has done the legwork.
The company examined the app’s privacy labels on the App Store and compiled a classification of the apps by the percentage of personal data collected, as well as the amount passed on to third parties …
You can probably guess the two worst criminals:
80% of apps use their data to market their own in-app products and beyond. This includes things like apps that run their own ads on other platforms, as well as in-app promotions for their own benefit or for third parties who pay for the service. We reveal which apps collect the most data for this, analyzing how many of the 14 possible data categories each collect in Apple’s “Advertising or Developer Marketing” section […]
The top two here are Instagram and Facebook. Both are owned by Facebook and use 86% of their data to sell more of their own products and serve relevant ads on behalf of others. Second are Klarna and Grubhub, who use 64%, while Uber and its food app, Uber Eats, use 57%.
The data these apps use can vary from your date of birth to offer exclusive discounts to the times you usually use the app. If Uber Eats, for example, knows that you usually surf at 6pm on a Friday, they’ll know when to attack you with the ads.
More than half of all verified apps shared at least some data with third parties, and the same two apps again topped the list: Instagram shared 79% of the personal data it collected, while Facebook did so with 57% of the data.
Applications collect your data for a variety of reasons. One of the initial reasons for this is to make your experience better by tracking how you interact with them to fix bugs and improve their functioning. However, they also use your information to direct you to advertisements on any platform. We’ve all seen it – when we finish browsing an app, an ad selling us something we just saw appears elsewhere.
This is done by passing on your data to third parties, something that our study revealed that more than half of all applications do. Third parties can be associated with the company that runs the application, or they can simply pay a fee to access their users’ data.
Social listening companies are often where their data goes. Companies like BuzzSumo and Hootsuite collect your data to allow people to analyze, understand and ultimately sell to you […]
Instagram shares an impressive 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. Second is Facebook, which gives 57% of its data.
pCloud also identified applications that collected and shared the at least amount of personal data, including 14 who have not accessed any.
You can see the complete privacy ratings of iPhone apps in the company’s blog post.
Photo: Szabo Viktor / Unsplash
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