Analysis of 20,000+ mobile health apps found 90% collect and track user data
The British Medical Journal reported on the types of data collected by mobile health and fitness (mHealth) apps in the Google Play Store. The authors analyzed 20,000+ apps and found that nine of ten collect and track user data. More than a quarter (28%) didn’t adhere to the platform’s terms of service to list collected data, including email addresses, cell tower location and multiple device identifiers. Results also identified third party libraries embedded in the apps and detected more than half were sending data to third-party servers.