Your Android apps probably do not sneak up on you, according to the study

Most users download apps to their phone without thinking too much about how their texts, photos, and voice calls can be shared. This has given rise to conspiracy theories that applications often spy on without our knowledge and consent.

A new study by researchers at Northeastern University with the help of UC Santa Barbara shows that most snot applications sneak up on people who use them. "From a set of 17,260 applications, we have discovered some hidden recording cases (ie applications taking pictures or videos without users intentionally doing so). ", write the authors of the study. On the one hand, it's good news: a very big part of the apps do not abuse the possibility of recording media, "said the study." D & D On the other hand, this could also indicate that our badysis has missed other cases of media leaks. "

The study, which was reported by Gizmodo, was only about Android apps , while future research as well as the interactions between mobile applications and devices Internet-of-things.

"Taken together, our study reveals several alarming risks for privacy in the ecosystem of Android applications" , says the study. For example, the GoPuff food delivery application and the TestFairy mobile beta test platform were identified as videos or screenshots, but it was not known not if the leaks were accidental or infamous.

edit applications that process images in the cloud without notifying users in the privacy policies and applications that request permissions that they do not use, thus opening the door to a third-party code that could exploit the generous permissions

the authors cautioned that more work needs to be done to make the conclusion of the paper more definitive.