A study conducted and unveiled last week has found that Android apps transmit data that is private to third parties. The data is typically transferred to advertising services and include ten shared unique identifiers. The study was performed by researchers from Penn State and Duke Universities along with Intel Labs using a tool called TaintDroid.
The study looked at 30 popular apps from the Android Market chosen randomly. The conclusion was that the some of the apps transmitted location and unique identifier info to ad servers. The rub for users is that many of the apps might ask to use and access personal info, but they never say how they are using that data.
Android devices aren’t the only ones to do this; the study also found that the iPhone shares similar information with ad servers. How big of a deal this is really depends on how serious you are about your privacy.
