Are iPhones Really Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

guest · Oct 2, 2021

What do iOS and Android have in common? Their apps suck at privacy, boffins say
Plus 'widespread potential violations of US, EU, UK privacy law' as an added bonus
September 30, 2021
https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/30/apple_google_privacy/

Apple says, "Privacy is a fundamental human right." Google says, "We build privacy that works for everyone." But neither mega-corp manages to provide much privacy on their mobile devices, according to a study conducted by boffins at the University of Oxford in England and an independent researcher.
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In a paper titled, "Are iPhones Really Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps," researchers Konrad Kollnig, Anastasia Shuba, Reuben Binns, Max Van Kleek, and Nigel Shadbolt examined 24,000 Android and iOS apps available on both platforms in 2020 and concluded that iPhones are not better for privacy, and that Android and iOS apps fail to protect data.

The researchers looked at 12,000 apps from each ecosystem, testing them via static analysis and dynamic analysis, looking at tracking libraries and the companies behind them, checking network traffic for personally identifiable information (PII), and analyzing permissions.

"We find that third-party tracking and the sharing of unique user identifiers was widespread in apps from both ecosystems, even in apps aimed at children," the paper says.
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"Overall, we find that neither platform is clearly better than the other for privacy across the dimensions we studied," the paper says.
Tracking tricks
The researchers said apps from both platforms commonly use tracking libraries, noting that the median number of tracking libraries in an app was three on both platforms.

"Overall, tracking services are widespread on both ecosystems, but slightly more so on Android, likely in part due to Google’s dual role as a dominant advertising company and platform gatekeeper on Android," the paper says.
Location, location, location
Access to location data was also more common in iOS apps for children (27 per cent) than in Android apps for children (4 per cent).
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"While it has been argued that the choice of smartphone architecture might protect user privacy, no clear winner between iOS and Android emerges from our analysis," the paper concludes.
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arXiv: Are iPhones Really Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

In this paper, we present a study of 24k Android and iOS apps from 2020 along several dimensions relating to user privacy. We find that third-party tracking and the sharing of unique user identifiers was widespread in apps from both ecosystems, even in apps aimed at children. In the children's category, iOS apps used much fewer advertising-related tracking than their Android counterparts, but could more often access children's location (by a factor of 7).
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Across all studied apps, our study highlights widespread potential violations of US, EU and UK privacy law, including
1) the use of third-party tracking without user consent,
2) the lack of parental consent before sharing PII with third-parties in children's apps,
3) the non-data-minimising configuration of tracking libraries,
4) the sending of personal data to countries without an adequate level of data protection,
and 5) the continued absence of transparency around tracking, partly due to design decisions by Apple and Google.
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Rasheed187 · Oct 3, 2021

What else is new, Apple isn't fooling anyone with their privacy claims.

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Are iPhones Really Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

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