We thought we’d change things up this month and instead of bringing you the best apps, we would focus on apps to be wary of. This month we’ll be looking at the 6 worst apps that violate your privacy.
When browsing though both the Apple and Android app stores you notice that majority of them are free to download. But beware of these free apps (and some paid ones too!), although they may be free the hidden cost could be your privacy.
Users should also know that when downloading a new app you can tailor the privacy settings to suit you. Found a great app that you really want to download but it requests your location? Remember when using an iPhone you can go to Settings > Privacy and open each app to see what permissions it has. You can choose to enable or disable the permissions individually.Android will be getting a similar system in the future version 6.
The following apps were identified by the site PrivacyGrade which does all the hard work for you by digging into every app and analysing their permissions and settings, as well as user perception of the app.
The 6 worst apps that violate privacy are:
Draw Something Free
If you don’t have Draw Something, you probably know someone who does. It’s a popular Pictionary app that you play with friends. It should be noted that it passes advertisers your phone number, call log, signal information, carrier and more from the “read phone status and identity” permission.
Words With Friends Free
Like Draw Something, if you don’t have this scrabble-esque game, someone you know probably has. It is from the same developer as Draw Something and shares the same privacy concerns, but it also goes further and uses the “precise location” permission to show you location-based ads.
GO Locker
This is an app that acts as a screen lock for your phone and promises to be more secure than your gadget’s built-in screen lock. This functionality means that this app has to know a lot about your phone and requires just about every available permission, like your location and reading your text messages (yes!).
The apps sends your information to app stores besides Google Play which is potentially dangerous since app stores besides Google often have malicious apps that can steal information from your phone. This could be a gateway app for unsecured apps or apps that do seriously hurt your privacy.
It appears that all GO apps have the same design that uses lots of permissions to send data to app markets besides Google Play – they should all be avoided.
Camera360 Ultimate
This apps acts as a beefed up version of Android’s default camera app with more modes, filters, free cloud storage, facial recognition and more. This app has the Baidu search engine library built-in. Baidu is China’s answer to Google, there is no reason why they might need the ability to turn your Wifi on and off. Similarly, the in-app purchases are powered by Alipaywhich is a Chinese payment system.
Angry Birds
It’s quite well-known that Angry Birds and its sequels aren’t the best apps when it comes to privacy. It is well documented that the Angry Birds app was one of the apps the NSA and British GCHQ targeted to snag user information from smartphones thanks to poor security.
It should be noted that the newer version of Angry Birds aren’t as bad.
My Talking Tom
This is a popular app for kids. It allows you to adopt and take care of a kitten. In addition to the inclusion of eight targeted ad libraries, it sends the advertisers audio from the microphone – pretty creepy for a kids game.
