Study: Apps Gather Location Data Roughly Every Three Minutes

A Carnegie Mellon University study has found that smartphone apps request device location information about every three minutes. The two-week long study tracked app requests for a variety of personal information: location, contacts, call logs, calendar entries, and camera output. The Weather Channel’s app requested device location on average every 10 minutes, and embedded apps like Google Play Services checked user’s locations about 2,200 times in two weeks. It’s small wonder the apps are so set on location data: marketers pay 10 to 20 percent more for ads that use that information, and when an app requests a location it shares that information about 73 percent of the time. Once the study participants were sent a “privacy nudge” notice alerting them to how many times apps were asking for their information, 95 percent of them reassessed their app permissions.