Android phones track you even when you opt out, new research reveals
Android phones rail you even when you opt out, new research reveals
There'due south no escape from tracking on Android phones. Even if you disable what you can, congenital-in apps volition even so be transmitting data to the companies that make your phone and its apps, a new report has revealed.
The study, by Haoyu Liu and Paul Patras at the Academy of Edinburgh and Douglas J. Leith of Trinity Higher, Dublin, examined Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme phones and their respective Android skins, plus devices running LineageOS and /east/, two open-source Android operating systems.
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"I think we have completely missed the massive and ongoing data drove by our phones, for which there is no opt out," Leith said in a statement released past Trinity College. "We've been too focused on web cookies and on badly-behaved apps."
The researchers intercepted the data from the phones during normal utilize to examine what precisely was being sent. Picturing a "privacy-conscious simply decorated/non-technical user", the researchers disabled tracking when the phone prompted them to, but otherwise left the settings as their default.
To nobody's surprise, the built-in apps on the Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme phones sent big amounts of data to the OS' developers, plus third parties including Google, with the Google Mobile Services and Google Play Store apps being the biggest sources of data.
Other companies being sent data included Facebook, Microsoft (in the form of the SwiftKey keyboard or OneDrive deject storage) and LinkedIn, depending on which pre-installed "system apps" were present on the device.
These built-in apps tin can't be deleted because they reside on read-simply retentivity (ROM), and can be given permissions that can't ordinarily exist accessed past normal apps. Many of these are bones Google apps, but some, every bit mentioned higher up, come up from the phone maker or through third-party agreements with other companies.
Every bit for the alternate operating systems, LineageOS didn't collect data for itself simply still sent data to Google via its system apps. /e/ sent merely very limited information back to its developers, showing that it's entirely possible to brand Android work without major information harvesting.
However /eastward/ is a significantly reworked version of Android designed specifically not to track its users, and offers a very different experience from stock Android without many of the apps a normal user is used to.
If you lot're curious nearly exactly what was sent by each Os, the researchers summarized information technology in the table below. The information is extensive in most cases, including information almost your device, which apps you're using and for how long.
The study concludes that "the observed data transmission goes well beyond [expected communication rates with Os servers] and raises a number of privacy concerns." ("Pure" Google builds of Android were non studied, just provided as a reference.)
Google seems to stand by its decision to collect the date that information technology does. A argument from a company spokesperson written in response to BleepingComputer says:
"While we capeesh the work of the researchers, nosotros disagree that this behavior is unexpected — this is how mod smartphones work".
The statement continues to explain that Google Play Services information is "essential for cadre device services such as push notifications and software updates across a diverse ecosystem of devices and software builds", while other data like IMEI numbers are needed "to deliver critical updates reliably across Android devices and apps"
Unfortunately users tin can't really practise much if they're bothered about this. Equally mentioned earlier, there'southward no way to opt-out of the system-app information capture. Any IDs you can reset can easily be reidentified by cross-referencing them with IDs you can't reset, such as your phone'southward IMEI number.
Installing a custom OS like /e/ is an option, but getting it to piece of work takes more endeavor than the average person is likely willing to get to. Y'all could always switch to an iPhone, but while Apple emphasizes how important user privacy is, information technology's yet impossible to escape all tracking with iOS.
Indeed, a dissever written report conducted by Leith this past bound plant that the cadre Android and iOS operating systems themselves (regardless of system apps) transmitted roughly the same amount of user data.
Meanwhile, a new Oxford written report released last calendar week constitute that iPhone apps were just as snoopy as Android apps, with 60% of iOS apps sharing data with Google.
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Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/android-phones-track-you-even-when-you-opt-out-new-research-reveals
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