Android is one of the most used operating systems in the world and in aprte it is by its own design and the approach that Google has given it.
But that also makes many people interested in looking for the necessary recesses to carry out certain practices that are not very ethical or directly illegal.
In recent months we have been hearing about the possibility that the applications that we had installed on our mobiles were not listening, to better understand our habits and show us information and announcements more in line with what may interest us.
So, at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, they began to investigate whether apps really did that, using several mobiles in which they installed more than 17,000 applications.
The result did not indicate that this was being done, although the way in which the study was carried out is very improvable, but they did realize something else. According to the study, published and downloadable in PDF, an application used screen recording to study user behavior.
A dangerous action
The application in question, called GoPuff, allows you to place orders from home to bring us various objects.
The problem is that as soon as this application was opened, the system began to record the user's screen, sending the resulting video to another domain, that of an analysis company that in theory is in charge of analyzing the handling of the app to improve the experience in future updates, Appsee.
In addition to the possible risks of capturing data from apps that overlap or appear in the notifications, it is clear that the postal code, a data that GoPuff requires when starting, is sent to the data analysis company, which we have not given permission to know that. But of course, we have not given permission to the installed app to record the screen, and it does.
Investigators brought this to the attention of Google, which they said would study the case. The problem is that it is more than likely that if there is a company like Appsee that is dedicated to the analysis of apps through this type of dubious actions, it will have more clients that carry out the same actions.
