Instagram Most Invasive App, Shares 79% Of Your Data With Others

Instagram has topped a list of “invasive apps” and is found to share 79 per cent of users’ personal data with third parties, including search history, location, contacts as well as your purchases and financial info.?

Safety-centric cloud storage platform pCloud made this startling discovery after analysing the recently launched privacy labels on the App Store in a bid to provide more transparency around iOS app data collection.?

Apple

Facebook, the parent company of the photo-sharing app, was the second worst offender and it shared 57 per cent of its users’ data to third parties. Now, the social media giant also collects a staggering 86 per cent of your data to sell you more of their own products and serve you relevant ads on behalf of others.?

“80% of apps use your data to market their own products in the app and beyond,” the report added. “This includes things like apps serving you their own ads on other platforms, as well as in-app promotions for their own benefit, or for third parties who pay for the service.”?

The least invasive apps?

Privacy-centric messaging apps like Signal and Telegram, video conferencing platforms Zoom, Skype and Microsoft Teams as well as streaming giant Netflix are the least invasive apps.

pCloud

And while social media platforms are the worst offenders for collecting your data for their own marketing, upcoming social media stars BIGO LIVE and Likke are amongst the top 20 safest apps to use.?

Similarly, food delivery apps Just Eat, Grubhub and My McDonald’s were among the few apps that gave away no user data at all. This is in stark contrast to similar platforms like Uber Eats that features in the top 10 alongside LinkedIn, YouTube, Duolingo and eBay.?

What data does Google collect

AFP

Apple’s new privacy labels have forced app developers to publicise exactly how they are tracking people. And after a couple of months of delay, Google finally released the privacy labels and revealed that it collects users’ location, financial info, browsing history and audio data.?

Privacy-focussed search engine DuckDuckGo had called out Google for “spying on users”. The image attached to the tweet shows side-by-side comparisons of the DuckDuckGo App Store privacy label, Chrome, and Google apps.?