The IT Nerd

Comparitech researchers have released a study looking at the privacy risks of religious apps. The findings are shocking — more than half of the apps offered by Google Play may be violating Google’s privacy policies. 

Key findings include: 

• The average religious app requests access to 21 permissions in total, 3.7 of which are classed as high-level/”dangerous”
• The most common dangerous permissions are ones that request access to read and write external storage (data outside of the app, eg, stored on the device), access location data (precise geolocation data or approximate location based on cell tower or Wi-Fi data), read the phone state (access to current cellular network information, the status of any ongoing calls, and a list of any phone accounts registered on the device), and request access to record audio and/or use the camera function
• 46% of apps (73 apps out of 158) potentially violate Google’s privacy policy standards
• The most common omission from privacy policies was the data retention period (not provided by 56 apps), followed by a clear policy on how users can delete their data (omitted by 48 apps)
• These apps have been downloaded 500 million times

You can find the study here: https://www.comparitech.com/news/religious-apps-study/

This entry was posted on August 14, 2025 at 9:00 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Comparitech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.