Dozens of iOS apps are sharing your location data with businesses

Are you absolutely sure how applications use your personal data? Do you have the slightest idea what permissions you have given and what others have not about the information that the apps you use have access to? Maybe not. And a study proves it.

An investigation published by a security study has confirmed that there are a total of 24 apps for iOS, located in the Apple App Store, who sent user location data to 12 different companies whose purpose is to market location data without users having the slightest idea that this is happening.

The 24 applications detected were found randomly,having taken a random sample. This means that of the total number of applications contained in the App Store, there may be many others that are also collecting location data from users and selling it to other companies for profit. The Guardian has also indicated that these applications would be connected to a large number of media owned by companies such as Sinclair, Tribune Broadcasting, Fox and Nexstar Media.

What applications would we be talking about

In this case, all detected applications would be part of the App Store, so we would only be talking about apps for iOS, Apple's operating system .

Some of these apps would be linked to weather services, but also to a fitness tracker. In principle, they allude in their terms of service, that they use location services to offer the main functionality of the tool. However, there are other applications that only use the location of users to provide them with more interesting ads Whatever they use them for, what is clear is that in Their conditions of use do not specify that they will use this data to share it with third parties.

Some of these applications would have obtained and shared information about the accelerometer, the unique identifier of iOS, the percentages of charge of the battery, the country code of the mobile network and the mobile network code, the name of the network, the altitude and the speed of the GPS or indications about the time of arrival and departure of a place.This data, in plain sight, can provide very valuable information about the life, behavior and actions of users.

What can users do?

While it's safest to uninstall those apps immediately,what seems obvious is that not all apps that sell location of users have been identified. In fact, it seems that there may be many more that provide this type of information to third parties without prior warning or user consent.

The fact is that to prevent this data from being transmitted, it would be enough to deactivate GPS tracking completely There is, on the other hand, the ability to limit ad tracking in the privacy settings of the operating system itself.But unfortunately, there are other technologies that serve (even more than GPS) to determine the location of users on the map. We are referring to WiFi networks, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), capable of providing geolocation with great precision.

Stop transmitting information like this by deactivating these services would prevent the normal operation of the phone, to access other essential services for users of any smartphone , which indicates that the users are actually well tied hand and foot.