You may be surprised to learn that your favourite mobile game collects your location and phone data to serve you advertisements. PrivacyGrade verifies which apps use your permissions for legitimate reasons and which only do so to display ads.
Android apps require permissions for varying reasons. Although some of them make sense (such as location data for Foursquare), other apps still collect data even if it seems unrelated (for instance, why does Fruit Ninja collect your location data?).
PrivacyGrade assesses apps based on the data they actually collect and what users would expect them to. Apps with high grades collect data that meet user expectations (Path only collects the data it needs to), whereas apps with lower grades often collect data for advertising purposes (DrawSomething reads phone status and identity).
Check to see if your favourite app is still worthy of the title, or if the app has secretly collected data that it doesn’t really need.
Comments
One response to “PrivacyGrade Shows You Which Apps Collect Your Data (Or Don’t)”
Whilst a nice start, I would hardly consider using it as a privacy indicator. The Facebook app has a grade of A when 17 out of 23 permissions are labelled “Not analyzed yet”
It’s like getting a passing grade on your driver’s test before you’ve done the test.