A lot of apps that are available on both the Apple App Store as well as the Google Play Store are available for free. These apps offer a wide variety of services ranging from updates on the latest news to information about what the weather is going to be like on a certain day. It is assumed that they earn money through ad revenue and the like, but it turns out that a lot of the apps that are available for free actually make money by tracking your location at all times and selling the data that is collected through this process to third parties.
According to research that was recently conducted by the New York Times, a user had her location tracked and stored every twenty or so minutes on average. This meant that everywhere she went from her office to her gym to the restaurants she ate at was recorded and sent to third parties for advertisement related purposes. Location targeted advertising is a big business, so much so that over twenty billion dollars have been spent on it this year.
An app that provides its services for free will inevitably find some way to mitigate those costs. Selling your location to the dozens of companies that will buy this data is one way to really cash in on the large number of people that are going to want to use free apps on a daily basis. A lot of the time it becomes very easy for these apps to access your location because of the fact that you allow them to access it in the first place. If you want to keep your data as secure as possible, make sure you check your location permissions and alter them accordingly.
According to research that was recently conducted by the New York Times, a user had her location tracked and stored every twenty or so minutes on average. This meant that everywhere she went from her office to her gym to the restaurants she ate at was recorded and sent to third parties for advertisement related purposes. Location targeted advertising is a big business, so much so that over twenty billion dollars have been spent on it this year.
An app that provides its services for free will inevitably find some way to mitigate those costs. Selling your location to the dozens of companies that will buy this data is one way to really cash in on the large number of people that are going to want to use free apps on a daily basis. A lot of the time it becomes very easy for these apps to access your location because of the fact that you allow them to access it in the first place. If you want to keep your data as secure as possible, make sure you check your location permissions and alter them accordingly.
