Popular shopping apps often violate their users’ privacy, new research says.
Around 60% of the most popular Android shopping apps are in potential violation of Google Play’s privacy policy standards, according to a review of 91 apps in the U.S. and internationally by research firm Comparitech.
On average, the shopping apps requested access to 26 permissions, eight of which Android classified as high level or “dangerous,” including access to body sensors, calendars, calling, camera, contacts, GPS location, microphone, storage and texting Comparitech said.
Thirty-two of the apps requesting access to an Android device’s camera and media files didn’t disclose this in their privacy policy and 12 apps requested access to location data also without disclosure, Comparitech said.
Groupon, for example, requested access to the device’s camera but doesn’t mention needing access in its privacy policy, Comparitech said.
The findings come during the holiday shopping season, where nearly 1 in 5 shoppers will use an app to make purchases in 2024, according to a survey by Bain & Company.
What were the shopping apps violating privacy?
The apps requesting the most dangerous permissions in the U.S. were Amazon Shopping, which requested 20 dangerous permissions, followed by AliExpress at 19 and Flipkart at 18.
An Amazon spokesperson told ConsumerAffairs that its “mobile app requests permissions for device functions that enable us to provide helpful features to our customers, such as the ability to visualize products in their home with their device’s camera or search for products using text-to-speech.”
“Customers have full transparency into the device permissions we request in the Permissions dashboard within the app and can control which permissions they allow to enable specific features, providing an additional level of control beyond their device’s settings,” the spokesperson added.
The other companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from ConsumerAffairs.
