WHICH? UNCOVERS UNDERHANDED TACTICS OF POPULAR PHONE APPS

04 October 2018

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:

“In some cases, we feared that apps were in breach of GDPR. In others, their practices were probably lawful, but had disturbing implications for the future of privacy.”

Although, all apps monitored within the study utilised encryption to a certain extent, this can also be seen as a negative aspect, as it allows apps to obtain data without customers understanding of why the data is needed.

One of the apps that appeared to undermine the privacy of their users was AccuWeather app, which features a pop-up advert that should only share data with 199 advertising partners. However, Which? found that the advert was sharing data with 18 unaffiliated advertising providers, yet another application collecting data without explicit permission.

The report sought out problematic location tracking on a variety apps including one of the most notable apps that Which? monitored - the retail and technology giant, Amazon. According to the report, the Amazon app displayed the postcode of the phone location, rather than the account address. Therefore, it is likely that the app obtained the postcode from the phone’s IP address without explicit permission from the user.

The UK digital advertising market is currently worth more than £10 billion. Which is why the consumer organisation is now calling on the Competition and Markets Authority to carry out further investigation in to digital marketing and advertising operations, and how they protect and utilise user data.