Popular VPN And Ad-Blocking Apps Are Secretly Harvesting User Data
Found on Buzzfeed on Thursday, 12 March 2020
Sensor Tower, a popular analytics platform for tech developers and investors, has been secretly collecting data from millions of people who have installed popular VPN and ad-blocking apps for Android and iOS, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. These apps, which don’t disclose their connection to the company or reveal that they feed user data to Sensor Tower’s products, have more than 35 million downloads.
Apple and Google restrict root certificate privileges due to the security risk to users. Sensor Tower’s apps bypass the restrictions by prompting users to install a certificate through an external website after an app is downloaded.
You'd think that Google and Co would sue companies like these for the policy violations; otherwise this type of business continues.