iPhone and Android Apps Are Tracking You

Saturday, 18 December 2010 | by Pat's Picks

You may never want to download another app after reading “Your Apps Are Watching You” in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. As part of an ongoing investigation on internet privacy, the Journal devised a system to track the personal information that popular apps are collecting and sharing. It’s frightening. The popular Pandora music player, for example, sent age, gender, location and phone information to ad networks.

Particularly troubling is the fact that the apps often share the phone’s unique identification number. Unlike a web browser’s cookie, the “UDID” is a number that can’t be turned off or blocked. One internet ad network confesses that’s “the great thing about mobile.” The Journal concludes there’s little you can do to prevent the tracking, since often it’s not even disclosed to you.

(WSJ.com graphic)

SOURCE: Wall Street Journal