According to data center company TRG Datacenters’ research, the Meta family of apps—Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger—request the most data from smartphone users.
The applications need to access fourteen different types of data rights, including browsing history, media files, personal location, and more.
On each of their three apps, the Meta policy is the same.
According to TRG Datacenters, the security of personal online data is deteriorating. According to Statista data, there were 6.1 million data breaches in 2022, resulting in the online leakage of approximately 700 million private files belonging to people and companies.
Smartphone apps must syphon personal data in order to operate. Studies reveal that the typical smartphone user has more than 80 installed apps at any given time.
Users provide these apps permission to access their personal data through “permissions” when they download them. These permissions can cover everything from obtaining basic data—like an email address or phone number—to obtaining financial information.
What is the most intrusive app?
TRG Datacenters analyzed the top 100 apps by downloads and determined which ones required the most permissions to run in order to determine which well-known smartphone app is the most intrusive with personal data.
LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instacart all ask for 12 data points from users, ranking second in the Meta app family.
Both LinkedIn, a professional social media platform, and these apps do not ask users for their browsing history. They also do not ask users for their health and fitness information.
The Meta family of applications has far more invasive permissions than apps like Google and Amazon Shopping, with 9/20, or 45%, of the top 20 iOS apps requesting access to 11 data permissions.
In addition, TikTok, the most downloaded app from the iOS store, only needs 11 permissions, which is three less than Facebook and Instagram, two competitors.
The top 20 iOS apps demand slightly more than 11 permissions on average (11.35, to be exact).
The Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger Meta apps are included among the top 100 apps that need the most permissions to function, much like they do on iOS.
Facebook Lite, the less data-intensive version of the social media platform, requires the same amount of data access as the main version.
Two extra rights than the iOS app version are sought on the Google Play Store by the search giant Google, for a total of 13. Similarly, X (formerly known as Twitter) requires only seven permissions on iOS, but eleven on Google Play.
The top 20 Google Play Store apps demand an average of nearly 12 permissions (11.70), indicating that the average amount of data access required for apps registered on the Google Play store is larger than that of iOS apps.
We give smartphone apps access to an astonishing amount of personal information about our everyday lives. The amount of data available to marketers and hackers alike is enormous, as 85% of people worldwide own a smartphone with internet access and an average of 80 apps installed on each device, according to Chris Hinkle, chief technology officer of TRG Datacenters.
Limiting the number of permissions that each app uses is something we strongly advise. While some features may make programs work better when enabled, data security needs to come first.
