Many Free Mobile Games Contain a Mountain of Trackers
Users' personal data is tracked and sent all over the world
Who hasn't downloaded some free entertainment app on their smartphone? However, behind what might seem like an innocent pastime, a very different reality can be hidden. Proton, a Swiss technology company, decided to investigate and examined the 100 most popular free games downloaded from the Google Play Store in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France.
How Proton's investigation was conducted
To determine the number of app downloads, Proton relied on estimates from AppTweak, a Belgian IT company specializing in the sector. To identify trackers, which are tracking tools, Proton used Exodus Privacy, an open-source platform that recognizes the code signatures of analytics, advertising, and profiling trackers within Android apps.
The data tracked by these trackers is then sent all over the world, but Proton focused on specific destinations: Russia and China, due to the current geopolitical situation; Israel, due to the high development of its hi-tech sector; and the countries belonging to the Five Eyes alliance (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), due to the user base involved.
Trackers and stolen information
The results of the investigation, taken from Proton's blog, are anything but comforting. On average, the games examined contain as many as 29 trackers each, which are capable of detecting confidential information such as the type of device and other installed apps, but also the user's gender, age, habits, payment data, and in some cases even real-time geographical location.
A very significant percentage of the games examined, between 68% and 73% of the total, transfer the data stolen from users to all the aforementioned destination countries. Sensitive information thus ends up in places where privacy protection is not enforced, but also in the hands of government entities and, since they exist, can also be stolen by criminal organizations.
Behind the apparent freeness of mobile games, there can therefore be a very high price. It's no coincidence that, in its article, Proton reminds us that when you don't pay to buy the product, it means that you are the product. So, how can you protect your privacy? Proton's advice is to install a good ad blocker, which filters DNS requests to prevent access to malicious domains.