In all fairness, its sending it out all day, we've come to accept that in order to have all the convinence of instant gratification via email, text, app messaging that some of our information is being shared. But how much, and to whom.

One interesting thing was that the trackers use your data to send out the information, without wifi they would use up to a gig and a half of your paid data plan.

You are paying to sell your information to companies worldwide... There are some tools included in the article if you're interesting in tracking whomever is tracking you down...

Link to Article

It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?

Apple says, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers guzzled our data — in a single week.

It’s 3 a.m. Do you know what your iPhone is doing?

Mine has been alarmingly busy. Even though the screen is off and I’m snoring, apps are beaming out lots of information about me to companies I’ve never heard of. Your iPhone probably is doing the same — and Apple could be doing more to stop it.

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -— once every five minutes.

[What you can do to limit app tracking: 5 privacy tips]

Our data has a secret life in many of the devices we use every day, from talking Alexa speakers to smart TVs. But we’ve got a giant blind spot when it comes to the data companies probing our phones.

You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” My investigation suggests otherwise.

IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties — just while I was asleep — include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.

And your iPhone doesn’t only feed data trackers while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That’s half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T.


The article is longer, click the link to read it all.

It’s pretty much in the fine print of every app one installs.

Interesting. I have added the Disconnect extension to my laptop browser, but it's not authorized for Android. Anyone have a recommendation for a good Android app for my phone?

Electronic Frontier Foundation has one for Android, but it doesn't work with Chrome browser.

Yeah, if you don't want your information or location known, don't use a smart phone.

After getting my first smart phone several years ago I quickly noticed my plan data being chewed up faster than what I thought I was using. I also started to notice that I was getting messages from apps using my real name and the gmail account created for the phone, including apps that I didn't use.

Since then I simply turn off both the wifi access and cell data and don't turn them on until I want to use one or the other. I also restrict updates to wifi access only and selectively choose which updates I will allow and which ones I won't rather than auto-updating. Obviously this doesn't eliminate the tracking or unwanted data usage but it does help to limit it.

The title is a little misleading. It is not the iPhone/Apple sending out the information, it is the apps you choose to install that are sending out the information.

It always dumbfounds me how many people who use smartphones don't understand what the permissions are and how to manage them.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with apps I choose to use, getting some data from me so that I can use the features of the app. That's part of the deal. What I don't want is applets buried in the app sending my data to people other than those I have authorized.

Trip information going to Waze so that it can provide me with navigation data is fine; that's what I have it for, but it shouldn't be scrubbing my browser history or digging through my email. I have authorized Waze to use my location, calendar and microphone. I don't know if it's doing anything else or not, but I certainly don't want it doing things I haven't authorized. I'm just using Waze as an example. I don't know if its being "bad".

This is a very interesting article, and thanks for posting it.
However: I cannot find Privacy Pro on the App Store site, except as a VPN by that name.
Disconnect.com takes me to a site that tells me how to delete social media accounts.
Has anyone else tried to download the Privacy Pro software mentioned in the article?

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
The title is a little misleading. It is not the iPhone/Apple sending out the information, it is the apps you choose to install that are sending out the information.

It always dumbfounds me how many people who use smartphones don't understand what the permissions are and how to manage them.

This.

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
The title is a little misleading. It is not the iPhone/Apple sending out the information, it is the apps you choose to install that are sending out the information.

This ^^^^^

Apple's privacy policies are straight-forward and iron-clad. Apple sells you devices and device support. They don't monetize you.

The apps you install can be quite another thing.

And still they're not as bad as sometimes are the "same" apps on other mobile devices. Apple places much stricter controls over what an app can access.

I don't have any of the cited apps, btw.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Apple's privacy policies are straight-forward and iron-clad. Apple sells you devices and device support. They don't monetize you.

Uhh that's monetizing you.

And yes it is your iPhone that's sending out personal data LOL. C'mon.

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Apple's privacy policies are straight-forward and iron-clad. Apple sells you devices and device support. They don't monetize you.

Uhh that's monetizing you.

And yes it is your iPhone that's sending out personal data LOL. C'mon.

As was stated, it's the apps you install, not the phone itself. I disable all location services, and any app that requires my info to be sent out doesn't get installed or is deleted. It's complex and hard to manage but it is what it is. If I didn't have to have one for work I'd have a flip phone.

Apple has total control of the iPhone and its App store. App store is where Apple rakes in billions as well. Yes it is your iPhone that's leaking data. Apple can easily stop all of this - remember, what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone??

Not, stays on your iPhone, unless you use our App store to install apps screened and approved and monetized by us, which can expose your screenshots, passwords and other personal data..

While some are more savvy than others I'd doubt that even 1/1,000,000 read the TOS on an app, and even more wouldn't comprehend the terms of the app or what permissions you are granting.

Most just want the "WhatsFucknew" app download, use their fingerprint to ok and roll on, having no clue that they are sharing personal information, or what personal information.

Those of you who do, kudos!

However I doubt even the well informed have any clue as to whats being sent out, how and when.

Apple does create apps and has tighter control over what they do, but don't think for a second Apple isn't data mining it's users, it's a big time income stream. Heck they are probably making something off the data stream off every app they "approve" for iStuff.

The phone does have ways to restrict data mining output, but it is cumbersome, you do have to go to many places to turn it off.

Of course you'd have zero working apps since the main income stream for an app is data mining.

^^^^ This.

Remember how Tim Cook was slamming Zuck and Facebook?? Well it turns out apps on his App store, screened and approved and monetized by Apple, was data mining for who else - Facebook!

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Yeah, if you don't want your information or location known, don't use a smart phone.

I don't have one. I also don't have an Alexa or a smart TV (it's actually got a CRT). I don't think my desktop monitor has a camera or microphone, but my laptop at least has a camera (it's shut and off most of the time). My flip phone has a camera, but it's OFF if I'm not making a call. I can't be much more private if I want to have some connectivity.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
^^^^ This.

Remember how Tim Cook was slamming Zuck and Facebook?? Well it turns out apps on his App store, screened and approved and monetized by Apple, was data mining for who else - Facebook!

We get it. You have an Android phone, and a likely irrational hatred of Apple. Move on with your life.

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Yeah, if you don't want your information or location known, don't use a smart phone.

I don't have one. I also don't have an Alexa or a smart TV (it's actually got a CRT). I don't think my desktop monitor has a camera or microphone, but my laptop at least has a camera (it's shut and off most of the time). My flip phone has a camera, but it's OFF if I'm not making a call. I can't be much more private if I want to have some connectivity.

flashguy

Agreed. Even then your internet traffic is tracked, as is your cell phone location when it is on.

Being monitored is something to realize is happening and minimize as much as possible with apps / VPNS / etc, however unless you go off the grid completely, you are vulnerable to it.

But even "back in the day", your phone information could be tracked (ie, calling from your home phone, phone company had records of calls, etc) and anything you mailed or received had a post mark - so while low tech, there were always ways to 'figure it out'.

My thoughts are if something contains a 'computer', is run by software, and has access to the internet, it can be hacked / tracked / manipulated by someone. Just the world we live in.

quote:

Originally posted by onegeek:

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
Remember how Tim Cook was slamming Zuck and Facebook?? Well it turns out apps on his App store, screened and approved and monetized by Apple, was data mining for who else - Facebook!

We get it. You have an Android phone, and a likely irrational hatred of Apple. Move on with your life.

quote:

Originally posted by Chowser:
It’s pretty much in the fine print of every app one installs.

Yes, and many require your permission to send that data. You gave the apps permission to do that. It isn't Apple.

IT IS THE TRADEOFF. Don't load apps like Yelp if you don't want Yelp to know about you. If you want to instantly know where the nearest place to get pad thai is, you are going to have to let your phone tell Yelp where you are.

This is within your control.

As several noted, if you really, really care, get a plain flip phone. Of course, even then, ATT will know where the phone is.

And mostly, there is no real, actual, quantifiable harm from it. You get ads and they try to sell you socks for weeks when you browse socks at Amazon. But the sock police don't come and arrest you.

I also understand you can be hacked, but that is a different problem, really.