How Thousands of Android Apps Could Secretly Track Your Data Despite Permissions
Discover how numerous Android apps bypass permission settings to share your sensitive data and what it means for your privacy.
Did you know that a single app on your smartphone might be sharing your personal data with others behind the scenes?
Android devices allow users to restrict apps from accessing personal information. However, new research reveals that thousands of apps can circumvent these restrictions by exchanging location and other sensitive data among themselves.
Experts from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Calgary, and Carlos III University of Madrid uncovered this privacy loophole. They found that if one app on your device has permission to access certain data, it can relay that information to other apps—provided they were developed using the same Software Development Kit (SDK).
This vulnerability affects popular applications from major brands like Samsung and Disney, which have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times. These developers used SDKs from Chinese search giant Baidu and analytics company Salmonads, enabling data transfer between apps and sending information to their servers.
One notable example is the photo service Shutterfly, which transmits GPS coordinates to its servers without explicit location tracking permission. It extracts this data from EXIF metadata embedded in images. Despite this, Shutterfly's developers claim they do not collect data without user consent.
The researchers reported these and other security flaws to Google in September last year. In response, Google pledged to address them in Android Q, currently installed on about 10% of Android devices. While there has been no official word regarding updates for earlier Android versions, future patches may extend protections to more users.
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