Study suggests many apps can harvest data

What do your iPhone Apps know about you? According to a recent survey, it could be a lot more information than you'd like.

Security firm Lookout Security has published the results on a study of more than 300,000 iPhone and Android applications and found results that many people will find startling. Most notably, the firm reported that 14 per cent of iPhone applications have access to the user's contact list.

The study also found that one third of Apps will access the user's current location data and 23 per cent contain third party code.

The latter two points aren't much cause for concern, as users are notified whenever an App asks for locational data, and Apple has both App Store screening and remote management tools to pull the plug on offending applications.

The access to contact information, however, could make a few people uneasy. Apple doesn't currently notify users when contact information is accessed, and that sort of information on friends and family is what some users consider very private information.

That's not to say that your new solitaire App is stealing your grandmother's phone number and using it for premium fee number scams or telemarketing cons, but it is something Apple should look into with future updates.

Ideally, there could be some sort of labeling system in the App Store to let users know what information an App requires before they purchase and download it to their handsets, but a warning message like that used for location data would work just fine.

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