android apps leak pvt info

A research has found that publicly available cellphone applications are releasing customers' personal information to online advertisers.

Researchers from Intel Labs have developed a realtime monitoring service that precisely analyses how private information is obtained and released by applications "downloaded" to consumer phones.

TaintDroid is an extension to the Android mobile phone platform that tracks the flow of sensitive data through third-party applications.

In a study of 30 popular applications, TaintDroid revealed that 15 send users' geographic location to remote advertisement servers, according to a statement of and Penn State.

The study also found that seven of the 30 applications send a unique phone (hardware) identifier, and in some cases even send the phone number and SIM card serial number to developers.