I thought Apple was the last bastion of privacy?

Excerpt:

"Apple says, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers guzzled our data — in a single week.

You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” My investigation suggests otherwise.

IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties — just while I was asleep — include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.

And your iPhone doesn’t 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 Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That’s half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T.

In a world of data brokers, Jackson is the data breaker. He developed an app called Privacy Pro that identifies and blocks many trackers. If you’re a little bit techie, I recommend trying the free iOS version to glimpse the secret life of your iPhone.

Yes, trackers are a problem on phones running Google’s Android, too. Google won’t even let Disconnect’s tracker-protection software into its Play Store. (Google’s rules prohibit apps that might interfere with another app displaying ads.)"

Much more in the article including a video and many links to related info here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/28/its-middle-night-do-you-know-who-your-iphone-is-talking/?utm_term=.a87a134c23a7&wpisrc

Edited June 11 by RV_

  On 6/11/2019 at 1:12 AM, RV_ said:

Google won’t even let Disconnect’s tracker-protection software into its Play Store. (Google’s rules prohibit apps that might interfere with another app displaying ads.)"

Old news, circa 2014.  When I clicked on the link I was taken to Google's Playstore where Disconnect's program and another dozen or so ad blockers showed up.

Edited June 11 by Lou Schneider

I asked Dave about this and he had me go into settings and turn off background apps refresh. Now nothing should be doing anything in the middle of the night. Except me since I rarely go to bed before 2 am.

Linda

Good catch on the author of the article Geoffrey Fowler Lou. I wouldn't have checked it because I already have a three year subscription to Nord VPN which includes the mobile edition for our Android phones. Do you use it or another? Here's his page: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/geoffrey-a-fowler/?utm_term=.26a065f93654

I went to the article and posted your correction here - WaPo comment

Edited June 11 by RV_

Linda,

Sorry meant to answer earlier. I'm glad you got the gist of the article and changed your settings. The writer was obviously an Apple guy and not well informed on Android. But I've been running Nord VPN on my systems for almost a year now. And I really liked the new Windows user friendly sandbox we just got in the last Windows update for testing security as well as privacy. All systems are improving from Apple too.

Interesting, this probably explains the unexplained data usage on my hotspot. I turned off background app refresh, we'll see what happens...

My iPhone will start talking to me while it’s on the charger. Never have figured out why.