An interesting experiment reveals which companies are most interested in your data.
In today's world, where smartphones have become an integral part of our lives, privacy and data security issues are coming to the fore. A recent experiment showed that phones can transfer gigabytes of data to other countries every day without our knowledge, and the purpose of such information exchanges remains a mystery.
An experiment conducted by a Cybernews journalist clearly showed that you should not mindlessly install applications on your smartphone. Even if all of them were downloaded from official and reliable sources.
Journalist and researcher Ernest Napris reset his Android smartphone to factory settings, and then downloaded 100 of the most popular free apps from the Google Play Store. After launching all the apps and giving them the required permissions, as well as registering accounts where it was required to get full functionality, Napris left the phone for three days with the Internet turned on and did not interact with it all this time.
To track connections, all traffic was routed through a private DNS service. This allowed us to identify which servers were connected to, when, and from where.
The experiment showed that in three days the phone made 6296 DNS requests, including many requests to servers in Russia and China, despite the fact that the author of the study was physically located in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Connections to Russian IP addresses occurred at least 39 times, mostly to Yandex servers, although no apps from this company were installed on the smartphone.
Connections to Chinese servers were recorded 15 times. These were mainly Alibaba, Aliexpress and Taobao servers, although the Taobao app was also not installed on the smartphone. Here everything can be justified, although "far-fetched", by the fact that the Taobao online store is part of the Alibaba Group concern, but the nature and purpose of these connections are still unclear.
In addition, the phone connected to servers in Vietnam three times, which only emphasizes the international nature of data exchange, because no Vietnamese applications were installed on the smartphone.
Nevertheless, the bulk of traffic, as it was quite logical to assume, came from the United States and was distributed among three large technology companies:
In addition, data went to the American TikTok servers, and the Chinese video platform was able to bypass even Google in terms of information volume with an indicator of 30% of all connections or about 800 requests for the entire time of observation.
As the author joked in the conclusions of the study, the phone located in Lithuania was able to visit dozens of countries on five different continents in just one day. And all this, of course, raises the question of the global distribution of data.
The study also found that many apps continued to consume data despite the user's complete inactivity. The total amount of data used in one day was 553MB, although most of the traffic came from app updates in Google Play and other Google services.
However, it is particularly troubling that such connections occur without the knowledge or permission of smartphone owners, which highlights privacy and security concerns.
Journalists and political activists may be particularly at risk, as they may not even know that they are being secretly spied on, which puts their physical safety at risk.
In addition, the study revealed the problem of excessive permissions that applications request. Most of the requested permissions are not actually required for the app to work properly, and some of them cannot be revoked without completely removing the software package.
The experiment also raises important questions about how technology companies and app developers handle user data. The importance of transparency and control over personal data in the digital age cannot be overemphasized, and the results of such studies serve as a reminder of the need for vigilance and an informed attitude to the use of digital devices and services.
In today's world, where smartphones have become an integral part of our lives, privacy and data security issues are coming to the fore. A recent experiment showed that phones can transfer gigabytes of data to other countries every day without our knowledge, and the purpose of such information exchanges remains a mystery.
An experiment conducted by a Cybernews journalist clearly showed that you should not mindlessly install applications on your smartphone. Even if all of them were downloaded from official and reliable sources.
Journalist and researcher Ernest Napris reset his Android smartphone to factory settings, and then downloaded 100 of the most popular free apps from the Google Play Store. After launching all the apps and giving them the required permissions, as well as registering accounts where it was required to get full functionality, Napris left the phone for three days with the Internet turned on and did not interact with it all this time.
To track connections, all traffic was routed through a private DNS service. This allowed us to identify which servers were connected to, when, and from where.
The experiment showed that in three days the phone made 6296 DNS requests, including many requests to servers in Russia and China, despite the fact that the author of the study was physically located in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Connections to Russian IP addresses occurred at least 39 times, mostly to Yandex servers, although no apps from this company were installed on the smartphone.
Connections to Chinese servers were recorded 15 times. These were mainly Alibaba, Aliexpress and Taobao servers, although the Taobao app was also not installed on the smartphone. Here everything can be justified, although "far-fetched", by the fact that the Taobao online store is part of the Alibaba Group concern, but the nature and purpose of these connections are still unclear.
In addition, the phone connected to servers in Vietnam three times, which only emphasizes the international nature of data exchange, because no Vietnamese applications were installed on the smartphone.
Nevertheless, the bulk of traffic, as it was quite logical to assume, came from the United States and was distributed among three large technology companies:
- Google — about 25% or 600 queries;
- Facebook — about 12% or 300 requests;
- Microsoft — about 11% or 250 requests.
In addition, data went to the American TikTok servers, and the Chinese video platform was able to bypass even Google in terms of information volume with an indicator of 30% of all connections or about 800 requests for the entire time of observation.
As the author joked in the conclusions of the study, the phone located in Lithuania was able to visit dozens of countries on five different continents in just one day. And all this, of course, raises the question of the global distribution of data.
The study also found that many apps continued to consume data despite the user's complete inactivity. The total amount of data used in one day was 553MB, although most of the traffic came from app updates in Google Play and other Google services.
However, it is particularly troubling that such connections occur without the knowledge or permission of smartphone owners, which highlights privacy and security concerns.
Journalists and political activists may be particularly at risk, as they may not even know that they are being secretly spied on, which puts their physical safety at risk.
In addition, the study revealed the problem of excessive permissions that applications request. Most of the requested permissions are not actually required for the app to work properly, and some of them cannot be revoked without completely removing the software package.
The experiment also raises important questions about how technology companies and app developers handle user data. The importance of transparency and control over personal data in the digital age cannot be overemphasized, and the results of such studies serve as a reminder of the need for vigilance and an informed attitude to the use of digital devices and services.
