A new study by digital privacy software company, Clario, has analysed what personal data the world’s most downloaded apps are tracking.
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We give away our data for free everyday, with apps that can now track everything from your weight and height to sexual preferences and music taste. Many are now even using a combination of voice, face, object and background recognition to tailor their services to you.
So which apps are using your data the most, and what for?
These are the brands who probably know the most about you...
Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are the worst apps for tracking your FACE, VOICE and ENVIRONMENT!
The three social media giants sit all are using recognition software to collect data of its users. They track your personal appearance, voice recognition, environment recognition, your contacts and have access to your image library which helps to recognise people and their key attributes to help them log on to devices.
Both Facebook and Instagram use facial recognition to let you know when you appear in photos or videos but haven't been tagged, to suggest that you tag people in photos and to recognise if you appear in any content.
TikTok's use of filters is one of the main reasons for its need to track your face and environment, as well as incorporating images from your library into some of its more innovative filters and features.
The companies that know the most about you in 2021
Top 20 apps that track your data the most!
| Ranking | Company | Percentage of Personal Data Collected. |
| 1. | 79.49% | |
| 2. | 69.23% | |
| 3. | Tinder | 61.54% |
| 4. | Grindr | 58.97% |
| 5. | Uber | 56.41% |
| 6 | Tiktok | 46.15% |
| 7. | Strava | 43.59% |
| 8. | Tesco | 35.90% |
| 9. | Spotify | 35.90% |
| 10. | MyFitnessPal | 35.90% |
| 11 | Clubhouse | 33.33% |
| 12. | Jet2 | 33.33% |
| 13. | Credit Karma | 33.33% |
| 14. | 33.33% | |
| 15. | Airbnb | 33.33% |
| 16. | Lidl Plus | 33.33% |
| 17. | American Airlines | 30.77% |
| 18. | Ebay | 28.21% |
| 19. | Netflix | 25.64% |
| 20. | Nike | 25.64% |
| 20. | American Airlines | 26.47% |
Table: Global apps that are tracking the most of user’s available data
Facebook knows your location, employment history AND actively tracks your facial recognition
Unsurprisingly, Facebook tops the list, storing a whopping 79.49% of the data they can legally collect on you. Facebook knows your job history, your locations, what devices you own, what you like to do in your spare time and more.
Mostly it’s used target ads, ads for which Facebook racks up $16.6 billion a year.
Next comes the Facebook-owned Instagram, collecting 69.23% of your data. This includes your hobbies, height, weight, even sexual orientation. Shockingly, they now track your face and environment.
All ensuring that its curated advertisements can pop up on your feed alongside your friends’ vacation pics.
TikTok knows more about you than you think
689 million people scroll through thousands of short videos on Tiktok or create content for others to watch. But just how much data are you giving to them?
TikTok tracks 46.15% of your data including your name, age, mobile number and hobbies. TikTok also tracks your face, environment and voice recognition data.
Dating apps know ALL your sexy secrets
It appears we give away LOTS of our data in the pursuit of love. Tinder stores 61.53% of your information, including your sexual orientation, weight, height, if you own a pet and your sexual preferences. Grindr comes in close, collecting 58.97% of all legal data, but knows more of your sexual preferences, including sexual position, kinks and relationship status.
This may seem intrusive, but what about apps that use our data to tailor their services?
Streaming services use your data to make your life EASIER
The music streaming service Spotify actually only collects 35.90% of available data, relatively little in comparison. But it takes into account what you listen to and even your Instagram posts to tailor music towards you, pretty cool right?
Amazon knows less than you might think...
It’s not all Orwellian - some of the biggest hitters out there know less about you than you might suspect.
Amazon, the biggest company on the planet, actually only collects a small 23.08% of your data. After your email, home address and bank details, it seems they need very little to be able to sell us 49% of everything we buy online...
Alex Maklakov, CIO at Clario cyber security says “It’s no secret that companies trade in their users' data. We’re all guilty of accepting the terms and conditions without perhaps reading them as closely as we should. But we want everyone to know what information apps are taking from and storing on their customers, so that people can feel in control online.”
For more information please find the full study here: https://clario.co/blog/which-company-uses-most-data/
About Clario:
Clario is a London-based cybersecurity company to disrupt the security software industry by securing people's digital lives with a human, customer-focussed approach to cybersecurity and act as a consumer champion.
