News How Google lets Android apps spy on you.

peabee.substack.com

Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

Until a few years ago, any app you installed on an Android device could see all other apps on your phone without your permission.
peabee.substack.com peabee.substack.com
This site is very good.
  • Many Android apps (especially Indian ones like Zomat, Swiggy) check what other apps users have installed, exploiting a loophole in Google's 2022 privacy policy.
  • Personal loan apps like KreditBee are the worst offenders, scanning for 800+ apps to profile users based on religion, education, and preferences.
  • This widespread surveillance enables companies to build detailed user profiles for targeted pricing strategies and data selling.
My personal experience, I installed CIBIL app a few days ago and I got bombarded with SMS and calls for loan transfer. Funny thing is, I don't even have a loan on me!
 
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Almost every app in this list is used by everyone in India. I saw some posts on reddit about how some banking apps won't even open due to some FOSS apps installed out of play store.
I was aware of Zepto about the difference in pricing between different devices. I didn't even think that these delivery apps spy on us.
 
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Quantum_Buddy said:
I was aware of Zepto about the difference in pricing between different devices. I didn't even think that these delivery apps spy on us.
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Right. This is an entirely different method of profiling the users.

An app can give you raised pricing simply because you already have HSBC, citi apps installed on your phone.

And, we as users don't have any control on this.
 
Any way to know which application has access to want kinds of data and permissions ? A website or app that scans our phone and says such stuff..

As of now, user can give access to phone, sms, location etc, but scanning phone data for analytics and user profiling is what we should avoid.
Example - a banking app checks and finds spinny app on user phone and start sending car loan offers
 
Quantum_Buddy said:
Not only this, but according to the price of your smartphone also.
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You are correct. However, to be fair, you do have control over that issue, and it's not a secret.

Additionally, this information should not be concealed. You need to share it with apps and websites so they can optimize their performance on your device. This is known as the user-agent, and it's older than most of us.
frozenscotch said:
Any way to know which application has access to want kinds of data and permissions ? A website or app that scans our phone and says such stuff..
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It's given in the article. You will have to extract the metadata. The article lists two loopholes. With one, apps have to explicitly declare the names of other apps in the metadata. But the second one provides you with access to the full list.

frozenscotch said:
but scanning phone data for analytics and user profiling is what we should avoid.
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Right, but you don't have any control on this process. It's not some permission that we can deny. You can, however, choose not to install tons of apps.

Or switch to an iPhone and hope that it doesn't snitch on you.
 
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Emperor said:
Google doing same from day 1, that's why it became search Giant and still holding position in world.
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I first started using google years ago simply because its search result was miles ahead of yahoo & MS & till now though not as good I still find its search results better than the rest.
 
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bssunilreddy said:
How to stop from getting sds on Chrome web browser?
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Simple solution, stop using chrome & start using firefox engine based browser like waterfox with ublock origin. Complex solution, start using pihole/adguard at router/network level. Middle of the road solution, use chrome with ublock origin lite which should reduced ads by 70-80%.
 
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