In recent times, when the entire world can be accessed via the Internet at our fingerprints, users’ privacy has become a big topic of discussion. It is a well-known fact that almost all tech companies and websites collect user data in the name of improving their services, but have you ever wondered how much tech giants like Android and iOS collect data and is it really their focus? It is the right time to focus. on this subject?
Well, this may be shocking to you, but a recent study by Douglas Leith, a researcher at Trinity College, Ireland, claimed that Google’s Android was collecting 20% more data than Apple’s iOS Yes, you can do that too fast. Not even imagined. In his research, Douglas Leith stated that both operating systems start collecting and sending data to their respective back-end servers as soon as the user turns on their device.
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According to media reports, Douglas Leith in his research used the iPhone 8 running on iOS 13.6.1 and the Google Pixel 2 running on Android 10, to test how much iOS and Android users collect data and The parent companies ship to Apple and Google. . After doing extensive research on both devices, they found that Android is collecting and sending nearly 20 times more data to Google than iOS forwarding to Apple. Data collection is a task that both operating systems perform continuously and it occurs even when the user is not logged into the device or performs simple actions such as inserting a SIM card or accessing the device settings screen.
The big revelation is that it is not only the operating systems i.e. Android and iOS that collect data from devices, but also some pre-installed and system applications that forward the data to the back-end servers. Douglas Leith stated in his report that Android apps such as Google Messenger, Google Docs, Google Search Bar, Safety Hub etc. and iOS apps like iCloud, Safari and Siri send data to their company’s servers automatically and continuously. Douglas found that while Android sends about 1 MB of data to its back-end servers every 12 hours, iOS sends about 52 KB of data over the same time period.
However, in response to the outrage caused by this study, Google rejected Douglas Leith’s research, stating that he used faulty methods to carry out this test. What are your thoughts on this research by Douglas Leith, and what do you think about user privacy in 2021? Tell us in the comment section below.
