Many Android apps reveal user data

A variety of popular applications for the Android mobile operating system have been found to reveal user data to advertisers, it was announced on Wednesday.

The study (PDF), conducted by Intel Labs, Penn State and Duke University, used an application developed for the project named TaintDroid to analyse how private user information was obtained and released by apps downloaded to the Android phones.

In a sample of 30 popular Android applications, 15 were found to send users' geographical information to advertisers' servers and seven sent unique hardware identifiers. In some cases, phone numbers and SIM card serials were sent. The applications tended to tell the user what data they would access, but not disclose who they would proceed to route the data to.

For more of this story, read Report: Some Android apps leak user data on ZDNet UK.