Default Is Your Android Phone Spying on You?
Quote:
The researchers looked at 30 popular Android apps, including The Weather Channel, MySpace, Evernote, BBC News Live Stream, Yellow Pages, and Spongebob Slide. They used a home-made tool called TaintDroid to track what data was being shared and with whom. The skinny:

* Two thirds of these apps violated user privacy by sharing location data or information that could identify individual handsets.
* Half of them sent user location information to advertising networks like Admob or analytics companies like Flurry without user consent.
* Seven of the apps sent the unique device identification numbers of the GSM user and the handsets' SIM card to its servers.
* Two of the apps captured the users' cell phone number along with the ID number and the users' geographical coordinates.

Nice.

Mind you, if the police wanted this information, they'd need a court order. These apps are doling it out like candy to advertising firms and storing it on their own servers.


Here is the full story:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20671...ng_on_you.html

I guess what app. makers understand with open source is that they can do what they want..