Most Android and iOS apps are constantly sharing some of your data with third-party services, such as Google, Facebook, and Crashlytics. Researchers writing at The Conversation say they've found 70% of the apps they examined were connected to at least one tracker.
In 15% of cases, the software sends data to more than five trackers. And 25% of apps harvest at least one unique device identifier. Those identifiers are useful for advertisers since they can link a large amount of data from multiple online services to a single person.
The researchers found 60% of tracking connections are to servers in the US, UK, France, Singapore, China, and South Korea. Those countries are known to have mass surveillance programs, so it's quite possible governments have found ways to capture the tracking data as well.
This research also came up with findings pertaining to children. Out of the 111 kids apps analyzed, 11 leaked a MAC address for the WiFi router the device was utilizing. It's possible to figure out a device's physical location using that address.
Collecting that kind of data through kids apps is arguably a violation of the FTC's rules.
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