A large-scale independent study of pre-installed Android apps has cast a critical spotlight on the privacy and security risks that preloaded software poses to users of the Google developed mobile platform.
The researchers behind the paper, which has been published in preliminary form ahead of a future presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, unearthed a complex ecosystem of players with a primary focus on advertising and “data-driven services” — which they argue the average Android user is unlikely to be unaware of (while also likely lacking the ability to uninstall/evade the baked in software’s privileged access to data and resources themselves).
