Apps sell your data to third parties for one main reason: to monetize via advertising. Sometimes apps share your data to help ensure they can keep a free service model, which means you won’t have to pay to download the app, but shouldn’t be surprised if they try and hit you up to pay extra for advanced features or if they sell your data to third parties that will pay for them.
We may understand the reason apps use tracking technologies, data aggregation, and cross-app tracking to get ahold of our data and then turn around and sell it, but that doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it or allow it. If you want to retain your data and not help apps turn a profit, we’re afraid to tell you that’s going to mean parting ways with quite a few of the most popular apps around. Here are three dangerous app types that could be selling your data to third parties.
1. Weather Apps
There’s no doubt that weather apps are helpful to have, but some have proven to be untrustworthy because they sell your data. Weather apps know your location and advertisers will pay top dollars for access to location in order to serve the apps’ users geotargeted advertising. Some of these apps track you as you move across the internet and visit other sites. By doing this, they collect data on your behaviors online, including your shopping purchases and your search terms. Weather apps have even been known to cash in on selling your environmental data based on where you live, which can benefit industries like insurance companies looking to sell you flood insurance to retailers offering to sell you umbrellas.
2. Social Media Apps
Just thinking about all of the information we provide social media apps gives you a good idea of the abundance of data they’re collecting about us. These apps collect your personal profile information, location data (some of the apps track your every movement all day long), who you interact with and how, and the amount of time you spend online and your searches. Several apps even use cross-app and web tracking to find out what you’re up to even when you aren’t on the app.
3. Games
Phone games are among the biggest offenders when it comes to apps that sell your data. Even the simplest, free games (and often the free games are worse) collect data such as your registration information, social media accounts, information about your device and its model, location, and more. Any time your game crashes, the app can send diagnostic data back to developers. They’re also likely using third-party analytic services to collect behavioral data about you and then turning around and selling that data to advertisers make a profit. The only way to protect your data in this space is limit the number of games you download — the fewer, the better.
