G.W. Schultz reports:
Half of more than two-dozen popular Android apps studied by researchers and available for download to smartphones secretly transmit the geographic location of users, i.e. the approximate physical location of a consumer with their device, to remote servers controlled by advertisers, according to new findings released Sept. 29.
But makers of the applications typically don’t provide privacy policies clearly stating how this sensitive information is being used or where it’s going. Seven more of the applications out of 30 send information uniquely identifying the phone and occasionally include actual phone numbers as well as serial numbers assigned to SIM cards where consumers store their phone book, text messages, call history and more.
Read more from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Here’s a video produced by Duke University showing TaintDroid in action: