What Are the 10 Most Invasive Apps on Your Phone? (Spying?)

A new study performed by the digital software company Inoxoft shows the top ten most invasive apps most of us have on our phones today.

 The study shows the most invasive apps that intrude into our digital lives

The company analyzed the privacy policies from 5,000 apps via the Apple App Store, choosing the top 100 apps in each category, or type or function of the app.

According to the study (Inoxoft):

"To determine which apps are the most invasive, they created an index out of 100 based on 46 indicators including 35 types of data, six purposes for data collection, and five different types of user relationships. The level of privacy intrusion was measured by whether each data type is tracked and linked, tracked, linked, not linked or tracked, and not collected at all, with “tracked and linked” being the most intrusive."

Basically, it has to do with how much personal data is taken, or scraped, from app users. To no one's surprise, Instagram and Facebook were ranked 1 and 2, with an index score of 61.47 out of 100.

Coming next, was Grab, a taxi-ride and food delivery app, with a score of 55.57. Next, there was a three-way tie between Threads, Meta Business Suite, and Messenger.

Surprisingly, next was  Nordstrom (department store app), and after that Pinterest. 

Overall, the study found that photo-video apps were by far the most invasive. Nazar Kvartalnyi, the CEO of Inoxoft, said this about the study results: 

“As our reliance on mobile devices and, more specifically, mobile apps continue to grow, it’s essential for users to be aware of the extent to which their data is being collected, linked, and tracked."