(Credit:Zain bin Awais/PCMag Composite;Apple)You might use these apps every day, but have no idea what they collect. These 20 apps are quietly harvesting your location, contacts, photos, and more—here’s what you can do about it.
Everyone wants your data. There’s a lot of money in selling or sharing the information that apps collect about you. That’s why tech companies leech data from your devices in exchange for whatever service they’re offering, and sometimes, collection happens without your consent. Some apps may surprise you. Why would a calendar app need access to your health data? Why does a calculator require your list of contacts? You might be surprised at the data some of the apps on your phone right now harvest this way.
The best way to know what you’re getting into before downloading an app is to look at the company’s privacy policy; you can usually find a link to a company’s privacy policy on an app’s landing page in the store or at the bottom of a company’s website. The next best way to learn about data collection is to take a glance at the app store’s privacy reports. It’s a good idea to ask yourself these questions and check out those documents before downloading and installing new apps on any device. If the answer doesn’t seem obvious, don’t download it.
With that in mind, let’s look at some of the most invasive apps that may be on your phone right now.
What Are the Most Invasive Apps?
The chart below is based on research conducted and reported by Marin Marinčić, the head of IT Infrastructure at Nsoft, a gaming and sportsbook platform. He examined app privacy reports in Apple’s App Store and compiled a list of data-hungry apps.
Keep in mind that companies self-report all of this information to Apple. That means companies could fail to mention some kinds of data collection or purposefully misclassify data collection to seem less invasive.
(Credit: NSoft/PCMag)Invasive Apps Are Targeting Kids, Too
Some apps for younger audiences collect massive amounts of information, too. Earlier this year, the research team at SafetyDetectives, a cybersecurity news and review site, analyzed 20 popular apps for kids. The analysts found that all of the subscription apps in the study posed privacy risks, 70% of the apps collected identifying information, and more than half shared user/child data with third parties.
Among the biggest privacy offenders on the list were popular platforms like Reading Eggs, a popular literacy tool for kids that collects audio and photo data from kids’ devices and also uses customer data for ads and personalization features. ABCMouse, an early childhood learning app, not only collects device data but also shares that information with third parties. Plus, the SafetyDetectives research team flagged the service as being difficult to cancel or delete.
Parents should be wary of apps their kids ask to install on their devices. Check the privacy reports of any educational or entertainment-related apps you install on shared devices for your kids, or apps on devices owned by your children.
Which Apps Share the Most of Your Data?
Now let’s look at the least surprising inclusions on this list: Social media apps. Forming bonds online means voluntarily giving up massive amounts of personal information in return for likes and digital hugs. That’s why it’s no surprise that some social apps use more than 90% of customer data to perform basic functions such as messaging or discovering new contacts.
The social media apps on the list are LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and the famous Meta quartet: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads. The Meta apps are particularly worrisome because they share the greatest percentage of data with third parties (68.6%).
WhatsApp Business earned a spot on the list of invasive apps because it requires a lot of your personal information (57.1%) to function. It’s worth noting that WhatsApp Business is separate from WhatsApp, a private messaging service with end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Messages sent using WhatsApp Business do not use E2EE, which means Meta (or anyone else) could be reading or recording your correspondence.
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