{"id":14237,"date":"2017-03-15T07:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=14237"},"modified":"2019-11-15T06:49:33","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T11:49:33","slug":"secret-life-of-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secret-life-of-apps\/14237\/","title":{"rendered":"The secret life of apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern smartphones have way more memory than desktop computers had a decade ago. Out of space? Why bother deleting anything when you can just replace your old 64GB memory card with new shiny 128GB card? It doesn\u2019t exactly cost a fortune. <\/p>\n

For the most part, inexpensive storage is a good thing, but there\u2019s a downside: With so much space, we don\u2019t care anymore how many files and programs we store in our devices\u2019 memory. According to our research, on average, modern Android users have 66 apps installed<\/a> on their smartphones or tablets. Moreover, we typically install about a dozen new apps every month but delete only ten, effectively increasing the overall count by two every month<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The real problem is that you can\u2019t control what all of those apps are doing. According to Kaspersky Security Network data, 96 out of 100 Android apps start working without users launching them. And 83 out of 100 apps have access to sensitive user data such as contacts, messages, calls history, files in storage, and so on.<\/p>\n

We set up an experiment to check how the world\u2019s top apps behave<\/a>. We downloaded 66 apps most popular among Android users and installed them on several clean devices. What did we find? Of the 66 apps, 54 were running and consuming 22MB of data allowance per day<\/em> \u2014 without the user even interacting with them.<\/p>\n

Android operating system actually provides the ability to fine-tune data that apps can access<\/a>. It\u2019s called the app permissions system. However, people mostly ignore this powerful tool: only 40% of users always adjust permissions settings for every app.<\/p>\n

Another issue with keeping a lot of unnecessary apps is vulnerabilities. In general, people are not good about updating the programs installed on their devices: Only 65% of users update apps on their smartphones as soon as the newer versions are released, and 24% do so only when they are forced to. The more apps you have, the less likely you are to update all of them right away \u2014 despite all Google\u2019s efforts, updating still takes time and requires some clicking through.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not only users who are guilty of carelessness; developers are as well. Our research shows that 88 of world\u2019s top 300 Android apps are never updated, leaving users at risk of exploitation by cybercriminals.<\/p>\n

All in all, you need to tend to your herd of apps. Regarding that, we have some advice:<\/p>\n