The IT Nerd

This Black Friday, around half of us will reach for our smartphones to try and bag the latest deal, with 27 percent of people preferring to do this via a retailer’s app. 

But is there a privacy cost in trying to get the best deal via an app?

Today, Comparitech researchers have published a study looking at just this. By analyzing 101 of the most popular Black Friday apps, they have found out the exact data privacy cost these convenient bargains come with. 

Key findings include: 

• The average app requests access to nearly 29 permissions in total, 8 of which are classed as high-level/”dangerous”
• The most common dangerous permissions are ones that request access to the device’s camera, access location data (precise geolocation data or approximate location based on cell tower or Wi-Fi data), and read and write to external storage (data outside of the app, e.g. stored on the device)
• 23% of apps (23 apps out of 101) potentially violate Google’s privacy policy standards
• The most common omission from privacy policies was the data retention period (not provided by 8 apps), followed by a clear policy on how users can delete their data (omitted or restricted/unclearly defined by 11 apps)
• The average app comes with 7 trackers, with one app (Vinted) coming with 17
• These apps have been downloaded by over 7 billion people

For full details, this research can be read here: https://www.comparitech.com/news/data-privacy-black-friday-apps/

This entry was posted on November 24, 2025 at 1:38 pm 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.