Apple, Google Both Track Mobile Telemetry Data, Despite Users Opting Out

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Mobile device-tracking by Apple and Google take center stage in a report revealing that, despite both allowing users to opt out of sharing telemetry data – they do anyway.
 
“Both iOS and Google Android transmit telemetry, despite the user explicitly opting out of this,” wrote researcher Douglas Leith from Trinity College in Ireland, in a recently published academic report.
 
The research, entitled Mobile Handset Privacy: Measuring The Data iOS and Android Send to Apple And Google (PDF), also found that Google collects up to 20 times more data from its Android Pixel users compared to the amount of data that Apple collects from iOS users.
 
“The phone IMEI, hardware serial number, SIM serial number and IMSI, handset phone number etc. are shared with Apple and Google,” according to the report. “When a SIM is inserted, both iOS and Google Android send details to Apple/Google. iOS sends the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other handsets and the home gateway, to Apple, together with their GPS location. Currently there are few, if any, realistic options for preventing this data sharing.”
 
Parameters of the testing did not include pre-installed apps baked into the manufacturers’ mobile operating system, or third-party apps. Rather, research focused on data collected by OS-level handset components and functions, such as Apple’s Bluetooth UniqueChipID, Secure Element ID and the transmission of the devices’ Wi-Fi MAC addresses.
 
“Google collects a notably larger volume of handset data than Apple,” Leith wrote. “During the first 10 minutes of startup, the Pixel handset sends around 1MB of data to Google, compared with the iPhone sending around 42KB of data to Apple. When the handsets are sitting idle, the Pixel sends roughly 1MB of data to Google every 12 hours, compared with the iPhone sending 52KB to Apple — i.e., Google collects around 20 times more handset data than Apple.”

Read more: Apple, Google Both Track Mobile Telemetry Data, Despite Users Opting Out | Threatpost