13 Per Cent of Apps Collect Phone Numbers Without Warning
- Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013
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12.9 percent of apps collect and broadcast users’ phone numbers without explicit notification, according to a Bitdefender study of 130,000 free Android apps.
12 per cent of the analysed apps accessed the users location data, and 7.7 per cent accessed personal email addresses. 
“The thin line between aggressive advertisers and malware is getting blurrier,” said Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender. “While malware may steal passwords and other credentials, aggressive advertisers may collect everything else. Although violating user privacy raises serious concerns, the risk of having collected data used for malicious purposes is greater than most people imagine.”
