Want to stop apps from sharing your data? There鈥檚 an app for that, too
David Choffnes keeps watch over his online privacy more than most 鈥� so much so that he designed a program to block apps on his iPhone from听hoovering up his personal data.
For instance, said the听assistant professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University, companies that request location data can track听his whereabouts whenever that app is open, even if they don't need the data.
The trouble is, he says, it's extremely difficult for most smartphone users to know exactly what kind of information apps are collecting, when they are collecting it, and whether third-party advertisers are receiving that personal data, too.
Choffnes hopes to give consumers more control over their data by publicly releasing the antitracking technology that he helped develop. On Monday, along with a team of researchers,听Choffnes launched a beta version of , which is designed to help users spot the kind of data apps collect and then block the sharing of that information.听
The team released the app on Monday听at Data Transparency Lab's 2015 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,听along with that reveals the scope of the so-called "data leakage" problem extends far beyond the United app. In fact, the Northeastern team found that听47 of the top 100 apps on Apple's App Store听share some personal information with third parties, and 26 of the most popular apps shared location data.听
Data leakage is also common among Android apps, according to the report. Fifty-two听of top 100 Google Play apps leak device information, 15 share user details with third parties, and 14 disclosed location data.
Over the past four years, according to a 听at Vienna University of Technology, University of California Santa Barbara, and VU University Amsterdam, the percentage of Android apps that share personal data with advertisers increased more than听300 percent, growing from 130,000 apps to about 500,000.
The Northeastern study did not examine whether apps that share personal data, or collect information when the app isn't in use, violated any of the apps' privacy policies.
ReCon is still in its nascent stages, but Choffnes hopes that his approach, will give users insight into how much of their personal information that they give to smartphone apps gets passed along to third parties.
The Northeastern study is not in identifying the pervasiveness of data leaks. According to research from Harvard University鈥檚 Data Transparency Lab, 73 percent of popular Android apps share e-mail addresses and other personal information with third parties, and 47 percent of iOS apps shared location data.听
For Choffnes, who says apps should only collect enough information about users required for basic functioning, ReCon could help stop a trend toward potentially invasive advertising.
"At least for me, [passing data] moves from something that鈥檚 innocuous, to something that鈥檚 pretty creepy," Choffnes says. "I鈥檓 not so certain that I want various companies to be able to have that amount of information about what I鈥檓 doing online and where I am when I鈥檓 doing it."
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