What Apps Really Respect Your Privacy?

A report by Surfshark shows what apps respect their user’s privacy, and what data they actually harvest.

Surfshark, a VPN provider, made a comprehensive list of apps from different categories, drawing from sources like CNET, The Simple Dollar, Healthline, and AppFigures. This team then went on to check Apple Store apps to see what data they harvest, breaking it down into categories of which data is taken, like location, search history, financing information, etc, and dividing them up into 32 possible data segments.

Which apps respect your privacy?

The key findings of this report were that on average social media and food delivery apps collect the most data, averaging 20 out of 32. Browsers and image editing apps collect the least data 6 of 32, the three most data-hungry apps were Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger track 32 out of 32 possible segments of your data, they are closely followed by Amazon shopping which tracks 26 segments, tied with PayPal, Line, LinkedIn and closely followed at 24 segments tracked by Youtube, TikTok, Wish, DoorDash, Klarna, and Caviar.

Shopping apps, 18 segments of data harvest, dating apps 16 segments, and Payment apps at 15 segments round up the top five, behind social media and food apps.

The least data-hungry apps tend to be ‘developed specifically with privacy in mind’, browser apps tend to do this and the apps in the top five of market shares like Brave and Duck Duck Go are much more considerate with data than Google. Finally, in general, the most popular apps, the ones with the most downloads, tend to collect private data across most of the categories of data.

Of the apps that actually do not take much data, seven apps in the study reported collecting no data on their users. They are Cisco Webex Meetings, Private Web Browser, InRoute GPS navigation app, image editing apps TouchRetouch and Pixelmator, and a messaging service called Dust.

Following this is Signal, an app made famous partly due to Elon Musk tweeting about it after it was revealed Facebook integrated WhatsApp data into their main database. Signal, only takes one segment from their user, contact information.

Two more apps only take one point of data, a cryptocurrency trading app CryptoPro which records user ID, and a pregnancy tracker Hello Belly, which is the user’s name.

Generally, the most popular apps for example the ones with the most downloads will tend to be more liberal with the amount of data they access. This applies to the following apps and categories, Browsers – Google Chrome, Email – Gmail, GPS – Waze, Kids – Youtube Kids, Payments – PayPal, Personal Finance – Mint, Shopping – Amazon, Social Media – Facebook and for Streaming – Youtube.