US smart phone users are eager to protect their private data, but this may be difficult given the enormous amount of applications available and their highly variable operating conditions, according to a study released Tuesday.
The Pew Research Center said they had identified more than 235 different applications for authorization from a million applications proposed in the Google Play Store for phones of various brands using the Android operating system, with an average of five permits per application.
Once these authorizations granted, usually at the time of installation, applications can access for example to information on "physical activity and users' movements, their online search habits and media use, use social networks and personal networks, photos and videos and share they do, and their major communications, "explains the study.
All these demands are not pernicious. Some applications may need to access the camera or geolocation phone to function well. But they also sometimes get private data and share it with advertisers or other parties.
According to a Pew survey, conducted by telephone in January and February with 465 adults, 60% of Google Play Store users have renounced install an application after discovering how much personal information it demanded, and 43 % withdrew an application to their phone for the same reason.
The Pew study does not lean on applications for iOS, the operating system of Apple iPhone.
The latter, which oversees more closely what the developers want to install on its devices, withdrew in the past of his shop applications that share private data with third parties without the permission of their owner.
A separate study published last month by researchers at MIT and Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon had already shown that 73% of applications for Android share personal information such as email addresses with third parties, and that 47% of applications iOS did the same thing with location data.
However, they fell as much data sharing were not disclosed. "Given the popularity of applications on mobiles phone, consumers are concerned about the amount of personal information that applications share", noted the researchers in an article in the Journal of Science Technology.
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