Android apps share more sensitive data than users realize
Even the most cautious of privacy-conscious Android users may be unwittingly sharing more sensitive data with more third parties than they realized -- or even intended to authorize.
In a recent joint study by Duke University, Penn State, and Intel Labs, researchers found that 15 of 30 popular Android applications sent users' geographic location to remote advertisement servers -- even though users may have only granted the app permission to access that data for the sake of unlocking location-based features.
Meanwhile seven of the 30 applications -- without explicit warning -- sent unique phone (hardware) identifier, and, in some cases, the phone number and SIM card serial number to developers. All in all, researchers found that two-thirds of the applications in the study exhibited "suspicious handling of sensitive data."
