Privacy International Study:
How Apps on Android Share Data with Facebook (even if you don’t have a Facebook account)
Article | Attached PDF Whitepaper | Video
We found that at least 61 percent of apps we tested automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app. This happens whether people have a Facebook account or not, or whether they are logged into Facebook or not…If combined, data from different apps can paint a fine-grained and intimate picture of people’s activities, interests, behaviors and routines, some of which can reveal special category data, including information about people’s health or religion. For example, an individual who has installed the following apps that we have tested, “Qibla Connect” (a Muslim prayer app), “Period Tracker Clue” (a period tracker), “Indeed” (a job search app), “My Talking Tom” (a children’s’ app), could be potentially profiled as likely female, likely Muslim, likely job seeker, likely parent.
See page 35 of the PDF for what little you can do to protect yourself.
This means that much of what you see on your phone either is, or could have been manipulated.
If this doesn’t piss you off then you deserve what you get.