Android ecosystem of pre-installed apps is a privacy and security mess

[LASER_oneXM]

Content source

https://www.zdnet.com/article/android-ecosystem-of-pre-installed-apps-is-a-privacy-and-security-mess/

Extensive academic study finds data-harvesting and malware-laced pre-installed apps.

An academic study that analyzed 82,501 apps that were pre-installed on 1,742 Android smartphones sold by 214 vendors concluded that users are woefully unaware of the huge security and privacy-related threats that come from pre-installed applications.

Researchers found that many of these pre-installed apps have access to very intrusive permissions out of the box, collect and send data about users to advertisers, and have security flaws that often remain unpatched.

On top of this, many pre-installed apps (also referred to as bloatware) can't be removed, and also use third-party libraries that secretly collect user data from within benign-looking and innocently-named applications.

The study is, by far, one of the most complex endeavors of its kind, and included both an analysis of device firmware, app behavior, and the internet traffic the apps generated.

 

[HarborFront]

Like FB, McAfee AV etc.... big data harvesters.... even not enabled

What one can do is either to root the phone (if possible) otherwise disable the pre-installed app, clear out its data, denied all permissions and block its outgoing using a firewall