Instagram and Facebook top list of most invasive mobile apps
Instagram and Facebook are the two most invasive apps in terms of privacy, according to a new study from pCloud that found that the majority of apps are now sharing personal data with third parties.
Following the recent addition of App Privacy labels on iPhone, pCloud analysed the extent to which popular apps are now collecting and even selling users’ personal data to others.
Overall, 52% of apps share data in some form, but there are certain apps that are collecting things such as a user’s location, browsing history, contact details and banking information in bulk.
Facebook-owned Instagram is the worst offender, collecting 79% of a user’s data to share it with third parties, putting it ahead of only Facebook (57%).
Every app in the top 10 list collected at least a third of a user’s personal data, with food delivery apps Uber Eats (50%) and Deliveroo (36%) scoring badly alongside YouTube (43%), Trainline (43%) and eBay (36%).
“Any information you agree to be gathered by an app when signing up can be analysed for their benefit and even shared,” pCloud’s digital manager Ivan Dimitrov said.
The study found that four out of five apps now use the data they collect to market their products, either within the app or on other platforms via ads and promotions.
On the flip side, there are actually some apps that value a user’s privacy and don’t share any information at all with other companies.
The safest apps to use include streaming service Netflix, privacy-focused messaging app Signal, and business communications platforms Microsoft Teams and Zoom.