Some 95% of the apps studied by Wandera were free apps. “There’s not a ton of money in the applications themselves,” Covington says. And it’s notable that, according to the research, paid apps tend to request no device permissions far more often (more than 25% of the time) than free apps (15%).
While users explicitly grant permission for the apps to gather this data, Covington says that there can be a dramatic difference between the access required to initially set up the app and the access required for the ongoing functioning of the app.
“Many of these apps ask for permissions that ultimately should be used once,” he says. “If you think about adding a new credit card to Apple Pay, you take a picture of the credit card and you really don’t use the camera again.”
Those ongoing permissions represent a security risk for more than just the consumer, according to Mike Fong, CEO and founder of Privoro. For enterprises and government agencies, giving apps access to smartphone sensors is risky.
Read More.. Source Dark Reading