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posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 20 2015, @04:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the stop-spying-on-me dept.

MIT researchers have found that much of the data transferred to and from the 500 most popular free applications for Google Android cellphones make little or no difference to the user's experience.

Of those "covert" communications, roughly half appear to be initiated by standard Android analytics packages, which report statistics on usage patterns and program performance and are intended to help developers improve applications.

"The interesting part is that the other 50 percent cannot be attributed to analytics," says Julia Rubin, a postdoc in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), who led the new study. "There might be a very good reason for this covert communication. We are not trying to say that it has to be eliminated. We're just saying the user needs to be informed."

The original paper [PDF] came via MIT.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @04:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @04:56AM (#265662)
    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   -1  
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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 20 2015, @05:08AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday November 20 2015, @05:08AM (#265668) Homepage

    That was a bad example.

    They guy's surname is Bull, after all, and judging from the pic he does share a rebellious strand or two of DNA with his ancestors:

    " The Bulldog is a breed with characteristically wide head and shoulders along with a pronounced mandibular prognathism. "

    So you see, people of the court, the man is descended from bulldogs!

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by frojack on Friday November 20 2015, @05:41AM

      by frojack (1554) on Friday November 20 2015, @05:41AM (#265678) Journal

      Ethanol, I'd remind you not to feed the trolls, but then you' starve.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.