Do you realize how often
your smartphone is sharing your location data with various companies? It is
more than 5000 times in just two weeks. That is little Shocking but True!
A recent study by the
security researchers from Carnegie
Mellon reveals that a number of smartphone applications collect your
location-related data — a lot more than you think.
The security researcher released a warning against the alarming approach: "Your location [data] has been shared 5,398
times with Facebook, GO Launcher EX, Groupon and seven other [applications] in
the last 14 days."
• First Week - Participants were asked to use their
smartphone apps as they would normally do.
• Second Week - An app called App Ops was installed to
monitor and manage the data those apps were using.
• Third Week - The team of researchers started sending a
daily “privacy nudge” alert that would ping participants each time an app
requested location-related data.
Researchers concluded:
• Some apps for Android are tracking user's movements every
three minutes.
• Some apps for Android are attempting to collect more data
than it needed.
• Groupon, a deal-of-the-day app, requested one
participant's coordinates 1,062 times in two weeks.
• Weather Channel, a weather report app, asked device
location an average 2,000 times, or every 10 minutes.
The participants were
unaware of how closely they are being tracked by different apps, and many were
surprised by the end results
"4,182 (times) – are
you kidding me?" one of the participants asked. "It felt like I'm
being followed by my own phone," adding "It was scary [that the]
number is too high."
Another participant wrote,
"The number (356 times) was huge, unexpected."
The research team found that
privacy managing software helped manage access to data. When the members
granted access to App Ops, they collectively checked their App permissions 51
times and restricted 272 permissions on 76 different apps. Just one of the
participants failed to review permissions.
As per users mentality, once
the participants have made the changes to the app permission, they hardly
looked at them after a few days.
“App permission managers are
better than nothing, but by themselves they aren’t sufficient,” said Norman Sadeh, a professor at Carnegie Mellon. “Privacy nudges can
play an important role in increasing awareness and in motivating people to
review and adjust their privacy settings.”
With the help of App Ops
privacy app, in the span of eight days, the participants collectively reviewed
app permissions 69 times, blocking 122 additional permissions on about 47
different apps.
Ultimately, the team
believes that if a user began getting the privacy nudges on a daily basis,
they'll definitely go back to their privacy settings and restrict apps that are
tracking users more closely.
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