Thousands of applications for Android and iOS have a problem with data leakage

You will probably be aware of the fact that many of the applications you use know about you and other unsolicited data. Zimperium, a leader in mobile phone security, has analyzed over 1.3 million applications written for both Android and iOS. The results are shocking. Some of them have a significant problem with data leakage to public servers.

The data leakage problem affects a large number of applications

Of the many applications tested, nearly 84,000 for Android store your data on public servers instead of private ones.

The same is true for approximately 47,000 applications written for competing iOS. 14% of them were even so poorly configured that even more sensitive user data could be published.

However, Wired emphasizes that this type of data leakage may not be intentional in any way, as many may initially think. These are usually unwanted steps next to the application developer himself, who configures certain settings incorrectly.

Instead of trying to build their own servers to receive sensitive data, they use public web services such as Amazon, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure.

There are also sensitive user data in the game

Quite worrying is that there is more than just basic information about ad preferences at stake. The Phone Arena Web Site reports that users’ personal information, passwords, medical information, and payment information are also disclosed to anyone interested in finding out the details about you.

Nearly 20,000 misconfigured applications leave the door open for a few wrong hands. What’s worse, some apps allow you to overwrite sensitive data, which increases the risk of fraud. In addition, Zimperium employees contacted the developers of these applications, but generally received no response.

It is not known whether incorrect configurations have already been exploited, for example by obtaining credit card details. We hope that there will be fewer and fewer similar situations and that there will be no inconveniences associated with this issue.

And how are you? Are you worried that multiple applications could have a similar data leakage problem? You can express your opinion in the comments below the article. We also recommend reading other articles with similar topics, such as the story of our colleague, whose e-mail and Facebook were hacked.