With app privacy tags now available for many of the best apps in the App Store, pCloud earlier this month took a look at the most “invasive” apps that collect the most user data. .
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It won’t come as a surprise to many that Instagram and Facebook share most of their data with third-party advertisers, gathering information about purchases, location, contact information, user content, search history, browsing history, and more.
Instagram collects 79% of personal data, while Facebook collects 57%. LinkedIn and Uber Eats were also serious criminals, as they collected 50% of the data. This study was done before Google shared the privacy tags of its Google and Chrome search apps, but it was found that YouTube and YouTube Music collected 43% of personal data to share with third parties.
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eBay, TikTok, Duolingo, Deliveroo, and Trainline were among the top 10 apps for data collection, with Reddit, Snapchat, Spotify, Pandora, ESPN, and CNN making the top 20.
Every time you search for a video on YouTube, 42% of your personal data is sent to another site. This data continues to inform you of the types of ads you will see before and during the videos, as well as being sold to brands that will target other social networking platforms. Instagram shares 79% of your data, including browsing history and personal information, with other online users.
YouTube is not the worst when it comes to selling your information. This award goes to Instagram, which shares an impressive 79% of your data with other companies. Includes everything from the purchase of information, personal data and browsing history. No wonder there is so much promoted content in your feed.
With more than 1 billion monthly active users, it’s worrying that Instagram is a hub for sharing such a large amount of data from its users who don’t know it.
Applications that collect data for use by third parties do so for guidance purposes, sharing information between different applications and websites. Apps 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.
Starting with the release of iOS 14.5, Apple will begin requiring apps that access a user’s ad ID to track websites and cross-apps for express permission before using it, which may help to reduce part of the sharing of third-party data.
Before downloading an app, it’s always worth checking the app’s privacy tag to see exactly what data is being collected, mainly in the “Data used to track you” and “Data” sections. linked to you “, which includes data collected for third parties. advertising and for the developer’s own advertising or marketing.