Be wary of nosy social apps – they track your life behind your back

There are good reasons to think twice, or better three times, before installing a social app on Facebook or your mobile device. Most of these apps snoop through your personal data and even pass it along to third parties you’ve never heard of.

The German-based privacy protection company secure.me has released a survey of more than 500,000 social apps (plus a screening service for Facebook users so they can keep tabs on the worst offenders). Their findings are sobering:

– About six out of ten of the apps (63%) can post on the user’s timeline behind the user’s back
– More than two thirds of the apps (69%) know the user’s email address
– Nearly every third app (30%) knows the user’s birthday
– 5 out of 100 apps (5%) access the user’s photos and videos, going beyond the profile picture
– Every tenth app (10%) is informed about the user’s hobbies and interests
– 12% of the apps have access to the user’s geo information including check-ins, hometown or current city
– 1 out of 5 apps (21%) can access personal data of the user’s friends including friends’ birthdays, education and work history

Read: Whenever you “save time” and log in with your FB credentials, you’re opening a big, ongoing data leak on your mobile device!

Here’s what the company’s CTO and co-founder Christian Sigl has to say about the state of affairs: ”We all have gotten used to connecting our apps with our Facebook ID and just clicking ‘agree’ on whatever permissions pop up. Instagram, SocialCam, Spotify, AngryBirds or CityVille — we connect with thousands of different apps through Facebook because it’s easy and convenient. What many people aren’t aware of is that social apps linked to your Facebook can essentially track your life — your current location, your behaviors and who you interact with. Your entire data halo that has accumulated around your online activities is given to every social app the instant they get access to your Facebook ID — regardless of your privacy settings. Seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top 10 Android apps have integrated with Facebook, and it’s notable that app providers have been able to collect users’ most sensitive data without any regulations so far.”

A bit of good news comes from the Pew Interner Project. Its latest survey on “Privacy and Data Management on Mobile Devices” shows that “57% of all app users have either uninstalled an app over concerns about having to share their personal information, or declined to install an app in the first place for similar reasons.”

Looks like people are slowly but surely waking up to the data heist going on right under their noses – and they take the right steps to plug the leaks.