Can free apps sell your data to third parties?

It was revealed today that the popular location app Life360 is selling customer data to data merchants, where the identity of users is quite easy to trace. Our AW Poll is about this way of making money through ‘free apps’.

Free apps don’t exist

The Google Play Store is packed with apps that you don’t have to pay for. That’s good, because we Dutch love everything that is free. But unfortunately there are no free apps because you pay with your data. For example with your location, contacts or photos. Once you install the app, it will ask for access to this data.

This data is then sold to, for example, advertisers and other companies. “That is not prohibited,” ConsuWijzer indicates, “But the app provider must clearly explain to you that it uses the data and for what purpose. And you must give permission for this. So take the time to consciously choose which apps you install. And what you give permission for.” The government counter made a very nice video about this subject a few years ago, which you can find below.

Find out which apps are following you

Apps can therefore collect your data on the basis of special permissions and trackers. They can then use that information to offer personalized advertisements. Exodus Privacy is a non-profit organization that analyzes the operation of popular Android apps and then indicates exactly how many and which trackers these apps use. You will also discover more about the permissions that all your apps have. So you can use this app to see which apps are following you and you can read all about it in this article. Then there is also Aurora Store. That is an application store that gives users insight into the data that apps collect about them. You can find more about this app here.

In addition, Google comes with restrictions for apps in the Play Store so that apps on your phone no longer see which other apps you have installed. Google has also announced privacy labels. These will soon be available with apps in the Google Play Store and will give you insight into what data a particular app collects about you and for what purpose. Those labels look like this and we will see them in apps in the Play Store in 2022.

AW Poll

Now we are curious what you think of this revenue model of developers who offer free apps. Don’t you think it’s a problem that a free app sells location data to third parties, for example? Is that just part of the business model? Or are you partly or categorically against this? Also explain why you voted for a particular option in the comments at the bottom of this article.

• If you want to learn more about privacy on your phone, check out our background and tip articles on this topic.