A study reveals mobile monitoring of Android with preinstalled apps. News from Gipuzkoa

Madrid– A survey conducted by Spanish scientists revealed that Android (Google) mobile phones are monitoring the user without his knowledge and are mbadively accessing his personal data via a large number of pre-installed applications that can barely be deleted from the terminal.

The article presents the findings of research conducted by the IMDEA Networks Institute based in Leganés and Carlos III University of Madrid.An badysis of the pre-installed Android software, which was published yesterday by the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AEPD) because of the "considerable impact" of its results on the confidentiality and protection of personal data of citizens, explained the entity in a note.

In fact, the AEPD will present this study and its conclusions in the working subgroups of the European Data Protection Board (EDPS), a European Union organization of which this entity is a part, as well as in Other European data protection authorities and the supervisor. European

The search includes more than 82,000 apps preinstalled in more than 1,700 devices with the Android operating system manufactured by 214 brands.

Virtually all manufacturers have detected a type of pre-installed software that uses privileged access without the user knowing the system's resources to obtain personal data, as pointed out by those responsible for the research work.

commercial agreementsThe main conclusion is that there is a complex system of developers and commercial agreements with preinstalled applications whose permissions do not match those from the Android to give access to their services without the need for any other application. an average user can uninstall them.

The problem is that there is "no transparency" on the activity of applications that the user does not have the ability to uninstall and that are predetermined with the terminal, explained one of the authors of the research, Narseo Vallina-Rodríguez, from IMDEA Networks. .

Sometimes this may have given consent to access a service, but at others, you may not be aware of what is happening with your personal information, the expert adds.

companies involvedAccording to the study, the model of authorization to access pre-installed applications on Android, different from those included by default by Google's operating system, allows to monitor and to obtain personal information at the operational level without knowing the affected person, "a large number of actors".

Among these, many companies (manufacturers, operators, social networks, multimedia companies, video games, antivirus, etc.) could obtain direct benefits by accessing this user data for various commercial activities or sell them to other companies. other agents in exchange for money.

More than 1,200 companies linked to pre-installed applications and more than 11,000 libraries (software included in applications for additional services) have been identified .- Efe

the key

The authors of the applications, a great mystery. The authors of those the appsThey are one of the great mysteries of Android. The search has found a scenario similar to the low depths of the dark web: there is for example the apps Signed by someone who says it's "Google" and does not look like that. The result is that many send acceptable information to manufacturers or large companies, but many others hide behind misleading or fake names.