How annoying apps spend Android users data

A new study may make Android users think before they download something from the app store. Eurecom has discovered that some applications exchange data with a huge number of web addresses in just a few minutes of using the Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini running Android. Many of these URLs are sites that collect consumer data for manipulating ads, some of which are shown in applications, and some are not.

Researchers monitored traffic between the smartphone and special servers to see what various applications were trying to access the network. They checked around 2,000 free apps from various categories in the Google store, and as a whole, apps exchanged data with over 250,000 addresses.

Our results revealed several interesting facts:

• a significant number of high-rated applications download an excessive number of ads, which indicates the anecdotal nature of the assumption about the accuracy of advertising;
• A large number of applications interact with a variety of tracking resources, transparent to the user;
• some applications contact websites that have been found to be malicious.

Our results highlight the need for greater transparency in the mobile activity of Android mobile apps.

Earlier this year, Google announced the start of monitoring, hosted applications. It seemed that this step would entail insurmountable difficulties for deploying malicious software. However, as for all other developers. However, many of the applications distribute customer data for no apparent reason other than the greed of their creators. Since virtually all information is sent to one way or another affiliated with Google sites.

The study showed that a tenth of the verified applications connected to more than 500 different addresses, and nine out of ten most often contacted the ads provided by Google. More than 70% of applications did not connect to tracking sites, but some interacted with more than 800 different tracking resources. Moreover, many similar applications are created by "top" developers. The worst application, researchers called Eurosport Player, which connects to 810 different sites.
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Based on all the above, we can conclude that Google allows different applications to exchange user data without their knowledge.