These days you can pretty much find some kind of an app for anything that you might have initially had in mind. This means that if you want to try and improve your concentration, lose a bit of weight, start to eat more healthily or take part in a wide variety of things all of which can come together to help you make your life a lot better than it might be right now, there is more than likely going to be some kind of an app that can help you out during this journey.
Now, a lot of these apps are free which might lead you to start thinking that you are getting the deal of your life and in a lot of ways this is certainly going to be true. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that these apps do end up profiting quite a bit even though they don’t take your money, mostly due to their tendency to mine your data and sell it to the highest bidder so that marketing agencies can offer more targeted ads up to consumers.
While this is an accepted part of the manner in which this industry conducts its business and attains a reasonable amount of longevity for itself, it does pose a threat to use privacy because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving really sensitive data that belongs to users without them even realizing it. It is essential to figure out which health apps mine the most data, and according to research conducted by Supplement Timing pretty much all of the highly rated and popular health apps mine an unnecessary amount of data.
Supplement Timing gave health apps a score on 27 different types of data that could possibly end up being collected by them, and they gave the app 2 points if the data had to be handed over in order to access the app and 1 point if it was optional. If the data was not collected in the first place then the app did not get any points, thereby making it so that the app with the lowest score would most likely end up being considered the one that cared the most about your privacy all in all.
It turns out that the app that got the highest, and therefore worst, score (29) in this regard was PlateJoy, a personalized meal planner app. Apps such as Couch to 5K, Anwell, Fitbit, Calm and a bunch of others also got high scores ranging from 19 to 26.
It is important to keep these things in mind as they can have a pretty serious impact on the kind of experience you can end up having with a particular app, as well as determining what kind of privacy one can hope to obtain while living in this modern day and age.
Now, a lot of these apps are free which might lead you to start thinking that you are getting the deal of your life and in a lot of ways this is certainly going to be true. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that these apps do end up profiting quite a bit even though they don’t take your money, mostly due to their tendency to mine your data and sell it to the highest bidder so that marketing agencies can offer more targeted ads up to consumers.
While this is an accepted part of the manner in which this industry conducts its business and attains a reasonable amount of longevity for itself, it does pose a threat to use privacy because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving really sensitive data that belongs to users without them even realizing it. It is essential to figure out which health apps mine the most data, and according to research conducted by Supplement Timing pretty much all of the highly rated and popular health apps mine an unnecessary amount of data.
Supplement Timing gave health apps a score on 27 different types of data that could possibly end up being collected by them, and they gave the app 2 points if the data had to be handed over in order to access the app and 1 point if it was optional. If the data was not collected in the first place then the app did not get any points, thereby making it so that the app with the lowest score would most likely end up being considered the one that cared the most about your privacy all in all.
It turns out that the app that got the highest, and therefore worst, score (29) in this regard was PlateJoy, a personalized meal planner app. Apps such as Couch to 5K, Anwell, Fitbit, Calm and a bunch of others also got high scores ranging from 19 to 26.
It is important to keep these things in mind as they can have a pretty serious impact on the kind of experience you can end up having with a particular app, as well as determining what kind of privacy one can hope to obtain while living in this modern day and age.
Take a look at below infographics for more insights:
Read next: AV Test Reveals Top Antivirus Software for Android, Surprisingly Third-Party Tools Are Performing Way Too Well When Comparing With Google's Security System
Updated on May 12, 2021: Post/Visuals updated to represent the right data. Previously Maven mistakenly ranked at wrong spot in an incorrect category.
){kind=link}