The Consumer Rights Association Which? have devised a report after monitoring 29 popular apps utilised by both iPhone and Android users, in which they discovered the underhanded tactics of several app companies when obtaining personal data.
Which? found that several of these companies uncovered borderline-lawful means in order to obtain unnecessary information from customers who were unaware, as they neither had the time nor were willing to read the overcomplicated and long data protection policies. After the consumer body found that:
“Based on average reading it would take 22 hours, 21 minutes to read all the policies in one go.”
The report also showed that despite the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being implemented in May 2018, there were still organisations ignoring the fundamentals of the regulation:
