Hidden data sent by many popular Android apps isn’t necessary, MIT says

It’s not shocking to hear that Android applications consume a lot of data, but you might be surprised to hear that much of that data isn’t necessary. A group of MIT researchers have revealed that a large amount of the hidden data found in the 500 most popular Android apps isn’t necessary to the applications overall functionality.

In their report, MIT researchers use the Walmart Android app as an example. The application allows the user to scan bar codes of products at Walmart to get pricing info, but in the process of that, the application also sends information to a server associated with eBay. MIT says this isn’t a necessary connection, and severing it has no effect on the functionality of the Walmart application.

MIT modified 47 apps to see if they were all indistinguishable, and as it turns out, only 30 of the 47 were. Still, the remaining 17 didn’t lose any core functionality either, as the only real noticeable difference was missing ads.

There isn’t any misconduct on this hidden data. On the contrary, much of it is analytical data that provides developers with crash and performance reports. Not only that, but much of this data is also to add a layer of optimization, helping the application work when you don’t have access to a connection. However, the concern is that all of this extra hidden data could be privy to a malicious breach, putting the user at risk.

source: MIT News
via: Engadget

Come comment on this article: Hidden data sent by many popular Android apps isn’t necessary, MIT says