Facebook tops the list of app that collect most data on users, claims study
A new study by digital privacy software company, Clario, has analysed the world’s most downloaded apps and – perhaps not surprisingly – found that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok top the list for collecting and tracking your data including your FACE and voice.
Facebook tracks your personal appearance, voice recognition, environment recognition and your contacts which helps to recognise people and their key attributes to help them log on to devices. Facebook knows your location, employment history AND actively tracks your facial recognition.
It stores a whopping 79.49% of the data they can legally collect on you. Facebook also knows your job history, your locations, what devices you own, what you like to do in your spare time and more. Mostly it’s used target ads, ads for which Facebook racks up $16.6 billion a year.
Next comes the Facebook-owned Instagram, collecting 69.23% of your data. This includes your hobbies, height, weight, even sexual orientation. Shockingly, they now track your face and environment. All ensuring that its curated advertisements can pop up on your feed alongside your friends’ vacation pics.
Finally 689 million people scroll through thousands of short videos on Tiktok or create content for others to watch. But just how much data are you giving to them? Tiktok tracks 46.15% of your data including your name, age, mobile number and hobbies. Tiktok also tracks your facial recognition, environment and voice recognition data.
Clario analysed 57 apps across various sectors to see which permissions they asked consumers for in their terms and conditions and privacy agreements. Each piece of information requested by any app was turned into a characteristic, totalling 45 data points. That allowed it to rank what companies have the most data on their customers across sectors, and attribute a percentage of data used by the app.
The companies that know the most about you in 2021 (click on the image to enlarge)
