Privacy and smartphone? They are not all the same. According to a study conducted by Trinity College Dublin, Android devices typically collect and send up to 20 times more data to Google than iPhones and Apple’s. In the US this means, for example, 1.3 Terabytes of data (compared to 5.8 Gb collected by Apple) automatically sent to the Mountain View servers. Google however he disputes the results saying that there are errors in the methodology of the researcher who oversizes the data collected by Android. Apple instead he points out that before collecting the data he always asks for the user’s consent (which he can refuse).
The data collected
According to the research, both smartphones continuously send data to their respective production houses: among these data, explains researcher Doug Leith, who is also the academic head of information systems at Trinity College, there are the telephone number, the location, information on the telephone operator to which the device is connected, any WiFi network and Bluetooth accessories connected plus other information.
“We investigated – writes Leith – what iOS data on an iPhone shares with Apple and what data Google Android shares with Google on a Pixel phone. We found that even though it is configured minimally and on standby, both iOS and Google Android share data with Apple and Google every 4.5 minutes on average. They share the phone’s Imei, the hardware serial number, the SIM serial number and the Imsi, the phone number of the smartphone and more. Both iOS and Google Android also transmit telemetry data, even if the user has explicitly disabled this feature. When a Sim is inserted, both iOS and Android send the details to Apple and Google. iOS sends the network identification addresses (Mac addresses) of nearby devices, such as other laptops and the home router, to Apple along with their GPS location. Users cannot give up on this and there are currently few if any realistic options to prevent this sharing of data. ‘
This information as explained by the researcher is of various kinds and it is not necessarily an invasion of privacy that it is sent to the parent company. A lot of telemetry information is often used for the technical operation of devices or for protection against new viruses and malware, for example. However, the fact that smartphones continuously collect data on the device as soon as they are turned on (even for the first time) and continue to send them constantly, at very close regular intervals, to the parent company even when the phones are on standby, is a fact. less known. The different relationship with which this happens is certainly not known: the researcher has compared the data base that is sent and has measured that Android devices collect approximately twenty times the number of data. collected from iPhones.
“The results of the Irish researcher’s analysis, which show that Android phones send twenty times more data to Google than iPhones with Apple”
What is telemetry for
Users can, if they want, opt-out, i.e. not give consent to the sending of a series of data to the parent company (for example those on the unique identifier for advertising or the GPS position for various services, including technical ones). This is information that the devices are configured to provide to Apple and Google, and is largely different from what is requested from users by apps that are installed at a later time and that (in the latest versions of the operating systems, especially that of Apple) require explicit consent to provide information.
Furthermore, the data that is collected and sent for any reason of a technical nature, optimization of services, for protection purposes (automatic updating of the software installed on the phone, for example, requires the company store to be informed of which software is actually installed), they should be anonymized per do not allow to go back to the user’s digital identity, which in this way instead risks being profiled and tracked.
What happens in practice
The researcher, on the other hand, saw that the phone’s operating system or pre-installed apps make data connections in total autonomy to send data to the parent company. In particular, while iOS automatically sends data collected by Siri, Safari and iCloud to Apple, Android collects and sends to Google data taken from Chrome, YouTube, Google Docs, Safetyhub, Google Messenger, the device clock and the search Google bar.
The total amount of data collected is very high. On each single device, when it is switched on, an Android mobile phone sends 1 MB of data, while an iPhone sends 42 Kb of data. And within 12 hours an Android sends another megabyte of data, while an iPhone about 52 Kb. If you calculate how many phones there are in the US, for example, you get that every 12 hours Google collects 1.3 Terabytes of data of telemetry while Apple collects about 5.8 Gigabytes.
Google is not there, Apple points out
The Mountain View house responded to the research by saying it identified “substantial flaws in the researcher’s methodology for measuring data volume, and we disagree with the research report’s statement that Android devices share 20 times the data of an iPhone.” our investigation instead these results are off the scale of an order of magnitude and we informed the researcher of our doubts about the validity of his methodology before the publication of the research report “.
For its part, Apple has indicated that the research fails to indicate that the data collected is taken with the explicit consent of the company, because Apple provides maximum transparency and control over the personal information collected by its devices: Apple’s ways of protecting privacy. prevent the company itself from tracking the location of users and in any case informs of any collection of user location data, giving them the opportunity to deny consent.
The researcher is pessimistic
Leith, on the other hand, writes in his research report that the collection of data from both operating systems is worrying because it is directly linked to the user’s name, email address, payment card information, and possibly other devices as well. disposition of the user. In addition, constant connections to back-end servers necessarily reveal the device’s IP address and, by extension, the user’s general geographic location. “There are currently few or no realistic options to prevent this data sharing,” Leith wrote.