Study finds Meta and Google mobile apps gorge on user data
- ID
- 15542
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 19 Aug 2026, 12:01 AM
- Fetched
- 19 Aug 2026, 7:36 PM
- Provider
- The Register
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/08/18/study-finds-meta-and-google-mobile-apps-gorge-on-user-data/5289171
- Source URL
- https://www.theregister.com/headlines.atom
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 19 Aug 2026, 7:36 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
A Surfshark study of 171 iOS apps from five tech giants found Meta apps declare collecting an average of 25 out of 35 possible data types, roughly triple Apple or Microsoft's 7-8. Google had 29 of the top 40 most data-hungry apps, and Amazon Alexa was the worst non-Meta app at 28 data types. The findings are based on self-reported App Store privacy labels, not independent traffic observation, and count data type categories rather than volume or frequency.
Why it matters
This is a VPN vendor's analysis of self-reported privacy labels, not measured behavior, so it offers no actionable technical takeaway for builders. If you ship a mobile app, the only practical signal is that App Store privacy labels are being scrutinined and compared publicly—ensure your own declarations are accurate and defensible, as third parties are ranking apps by them.
Discussion angle
The methodology gap: these are declared data types from App Store labels, not observed network traffic—discuss how much weight to give vendor-funded privacy studies that don't measure actual data transmission.