Developers of more than 5% of free applications embed adware in their products that can change phone settings, send notifications to the user without asking and get access to his personal data. This conclusion was reached by the company Lookout, which deals with security issues on mobile devices.
According to her estimates, in total, more than 80 million downloads of applications with advertising of this kind have already been made. Most of them are on Android devices.
As a rule, such aggressively configured advertising networks are embedded in applications that offer personalization – for example, they help to change the wallpaper on the desktop of a smartphone or create your own puzzle.
Note that embedded adware is more common in Android applications than for iOS, where the selection of products is much stricter.
“Developers often embed “bad” ads without malicious intentions – they just don’t think about the consequences,” said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder and CTO of Lookout. “However, the more freedom, the higher the responsibility,” Mr. Mahaffy added.