2012-08-01
Abstract
Researchers find that an alarming number of iOS apps access data without the user’s permission.
Copyright © 2012 Virus Bulletin
Bitdefender researchers have found that almost one in five iOS apps can access a user’s iPhone address book, 41% can track the user’s location, and more than one in three store user data without encrypting it.
The researchers looked at more than 65,000 apps available from Apple’s App Store and found that an alarming number of applications access user data without explicitly seeking the user’s permission. Although it was clear that many of the apps required such data and privileges in order to function, the researchers found many others that seemed to have no requirement for the data they were collecting. Furthermore, 42.5% of the applications did not encrypt user data when storing it – thus potentially putting the data at risk after collecting it..
Of the apps analysed, 18.6% were able to access the full contents of the user’s address book – the researchers considered it unlikely that all of these apps would legitimately require access to the address book.
Meanwhile, 41.4% of the apps analysed had location-tracking functionality – making it likely that the majorty of iPhone users have at least one app on their device that knows their location.
