Apple App tracking user data application background refresh to be turned off
4hw.com.cn: in the morning of May 29 Beijing time, according to a privacy experiment conducted by the Washington Post, some IOS applications will use this function to regularly send data to tracking companies when allowing background applications to refresh.
"Washington Post" reporter Joe Frey & middot; Geoffrey Fowler partnered with the privacy company disconnect to use proprietary software to view the operation of his iPhone. Although it is not surprising that some applications use trackers and share user data, the frequency of sending data using the background refresh function is still surprising.
These apps will send information such as mobile phone number, email address, geographic location and IP address, including Microsoft onedrive, mint, Nike, spotify, the weather channel, doordash, yelp, citizen and even the Washington Post's own IOS apps. Among them, the personally identifiable information shared by citizen violated its privacy policy, and yelp sent the information every five minutes, but the company later said it was a vulnerability.
During the week-long test, 5400 trackers were found, most of which are in the application. Disconnect revealed that these trackers may send 1.5GB of data in a month.
The tracker in the application has a variety of different purposes. Some can analyze user behavior, make the application simplify advertising series, fight fraud or create accurate advertising. For example, the express application doordash was found to use nine trackers in the application and share information such as device name, advertising identification code, accelerometer data, shipping address, name, e-mail and operator.
Doordash also uses trackers from Facebook and Google advertising services, so that these companies can also receive notifications when users use doordash's services. This is not the case alone.
Not all data collection is malicious. Some will be anonymous and deleted after a certain time. However, some trackers will collect specific user data, but do not provide a clear saving time and sharing object.
Fowler pointed out that there is no way to know which applications are using the tracker and which data is sent out, and apple does not provide the corresponding tools. The company only gave a standardized privacy reply in its response.
Fowler suggested that Apple could require applications to add labels when using third-party trackers, while disconnect, a privacy company, believes that strengthening Privacy Control in IOS can allow users to better control data.
IOS users who are worried about applications secretly sending data can turn off the background refresh function and use VPN applications such as privacy pro of disconnect to restrict applications from sending data to third parties.