Every app in the study shared data with third parties, including personal attributes like gender and age, advertising IDs, IP address, GPS locations, and users’ behavior.
For instance, a company called Braze received intimate details about users from OKCupid and Grindr, including information users submitted for match making such as details about sexuality, political views, and drug use.
Perfect365, a makeup and photo editing app that counts Kim Kardashian West among its fans, sent user data, sometimes including GPS location, to more than 70 other companies.
Consumer Reports reached out to Grindr and Match Group, which owns OkCupid and Tinder. The companies did not respond to CR’s questions prior to publication. A Perfect365 representative told Consumer Reports the company “is in compliance with the GDPR,” but did not respond to specific questions.
App privacy policies often make it clear that data is shared with third parties, but experts say it’s impossible for consumers to get enough information to give meaningful consent.
For example, Grindr’s privacy policy says its advertising partners “may also collect information directly from you.” Grindr's policy goes on to explain that the ways those third parties choose to use or share your data is governed by their own privacy policies, but it doesn’t name all those other companies, in case you wanted to investigate further.
At least some of those other businesses, including Braze, say they may pass your information onto additional companies, in what amounts to an invisible chain reaction of data-sharing. Even if you had time to read all the privacy policies you're subject to, you wouldn’t know which ones to look at.
“These practices are both highly problematic from an ethical perspective, and are rife with privacy violations and breaches of European law,” said Finn Myrstad, the director of digital policy at the Norwegian Consumer Council, in a press release.
The United States doesn’t have a national privacy law equivalent to the GDPR, but California residents may have new rights that could be used prevent some of the practices outlined by the NCC thanks to the California Consumer Privacy Act, which went into effect on January 1.
But whether or not the CCPA will actually protect consumers all depends on how the California Attorney General interprets the law. The Attorney General’s office is set to release guidelines for CCPA in the next six months.
“The report makes it clear that even if you have laws on the books that protect consumer privacy rights and preferences, that doesn't really matter unless you have a strong cop in the beat,” McInnis says.
Consumer Reports is signing onto letters with nine other U.S.-based advocacy groups calling on Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, and the California, Oregon, and Texas Attorneys General to investigate, and asking that regulators take this new information into consideration as they work towards future privacy regulation.
There are lessons here for consumers as well.
“A big problem is that consumers generally worry about the wrong things,” Berkeley's Egelman says. “Most people really care about apps secretly recording audio or video, which doesn't really happen all that often, but then don't understand all the things that are being inferred about them just based on their location data and the persistent identifiers that uniquely identify their devices.”
Consumers can take a number of steps to protect their privacy. These include adjusting privacy settings for Facebook and Google, limiting which apps have permission to access things like location information, and deleting old accounts you’re no longer using. You may not be able to solve the problem entirely, but you don’t have to wait for federal regulators to make meaningful changes that will protect your privacy.
For more information, check out Consumer Reports' guide to privacy and security, or follow our steps for 30-second privacy fixes you can tackle right now.
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Popular Apps Share Intimate Details About You With Dozens of Companies - ConsumerReports.org
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