This is fairly clear to programmers and similarly tech-savvy folks, but unclear to many others.<\/p>\n
\nOur data has a secret life in many of the devices we use every day, from <\/span>talking Alexa speakers<\/a> <\/span>to <\/span>smart TVs<\/a>. But we\u2019ve got a giant blind spot when it comes to the data companies probing our phones.<\/p>\n
You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it <\/span>touted in a recent ad<\/a>, \u201cWhat happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.\u201d My investigation suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n
IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties \u2014 just while I was asleep \u2014 include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit\u2019s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM\u2019s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.<\/p>\n
And your iPhone doesn\u2019t only feed data trackers while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm <\/span>Disconnect<\/a>, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That\u2019s half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n