Most Of The Android Applications Have Secret Trackers

Is there something keeping an eye on the activities you do? Yes, we need to accept this fact and this is an invasion of privacy. A new study by Yale University’s Privacy Lab and French non-profit organization Exodus Privacy has shed a light on the privacy concerns of the Android users.
 

Surprisingly, this report has revealed that hundreds of Android apps have third-party trackers installed in them. They are using “clandestine surveillance software” to keep track on their actions. These tracking tools are devised largely to collect personal information of users for targeted advertising, user behaviors, and location tracking. The prime purpose of these trackers is to gain insights from the user's data for giving them services and their profit.

Many famous apps fall in this “hidden trackers” category, including Tinder, Spotify, Uber and OKCupid and many others too. As per the research was done, about 75 percent of the Android apps are found to have trackers implanted to monitor the user habits and behaviors for monetary gains. 

Majority of the Android users are unaware of the fact that their personal data is being shared by these trackers. This research into the Apps of Google play store has raised grave concerns about the user private data. 

A tracker named FidZup is very powerful, it can track the movements of the mobile phone users using ultrasonic emitters. It can detect where the users are going for shopping and to which place. In that way, it shows up those ads which are relevant for the users and can help advertising companies by tracking the location of the users.

One more tracker which belongs to the tech giant Google is known as Crashlytics. It is invented to report the crash happens to the apps. It also sends the reasons behind the Apps crashes to the developers. The tracker is also believed to get the user information to infuse live social substance to enchant them and to keep track of what they are involved with. Apps such as AccuWeather and the Weather Channel, contain trackers to surveil web browsing activities and app usage behaviors over the time.

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CyberGhost VPN service App users will be surprised to know that tracker named Loggly is designed to gather anonymized user data and to share it with third-party companies. There are many more apps which might have more than 4 trackers. All these trackers have different purposes but their prime purpose that has been found is to target ads and analyze behaviors. Also, location tracking.

These findings by  Yale University’s Privacy Lab are revealing the issues concerned with Android users. According to the researchers at Yale Privacy Lab, Android App users need just about the transparency of the apps and the disguised third party code existed in the apps.

Apple’s iOS platform is yet to be uncovered about the presence of these trackers involved in its iOS apps. However, the companies associated with the Android app’s trackers are the same which serves iOS apps too. Therefore, there is a maximum possibility of these trackers involved with iOS apps. 
At last, Users should not blindly download the free apps. They need to have proper knowledge about the apps and download only trusted ones.