They deliver us food, brighten up our photos, connect us with friends and much more: apps. Only they turn an iPhone into an iPhone. In the App Store, owners of the cult cell phone will find millions of apps for every purpose. But many of them are real data octopuses, as a survey of the most popular free iPhone apps now shows.
heyData took a closer look at more than 120 of the most popular free iPhone apps from the German App Store (Source: heyData). “We wanted to find out which applications are particularly interested in our data,” explains the company. heyData identified three different cases for app data:
- Selling to Third-Party Providers and Advertisers
- Use for your own marketing
- Use to track users on other apps and websites
Meta and delivery services are particularly fond of accessing data from iPhone users
The result is frightening, because many well-known apps are real data octopuses. When it comes to apps that sell user data to third parties, Meta is at the forefront. The Facebook Messenger, Facebook and Instagram can be found on the podium. But also LinkedIn, the news app FAZ.NET and the Delivery services getir and Uber Eats are busy selling user data.
Surprising: At the Request to access your own locationdelivery services or car sharing offers are not the top priority – but the educational app Duolingo. The most data-hungry dating apps, on the other hand, are LOVOO-Dating, Badoo and Bumble.
These apps belong on every mobile phone:
Even health apps can sell data to third-party advertisers
Particularly problematic: The advertising industry does not even stop at sensitive health data. According to heyData, for example, the Mental health app MindDoc in the App Store indicates that personal information could be sold to third party advertisers. After all, MindDoc is alone in this: “On the positive side, no other mental health app on our list does the same,” says heyData.