Top Permissions 1,500 Largest iOS App Request Globally

The top three permissions requested by iPhone apps globally are for photos, camera access, and location while using the app. But 40% of the top 1,500 apps in the US apply for location permissions in the background that can allow them to track your every move, and that rises to 51% in China.

Another quarter of the top apps usually ask to access your contacts and also ask for Bluetooth permissions, which can be used to determine location.

Less than 1% request the HomeKit integration so you can ask Siri to turn off the lights.

And NFC and GameKit, Apple’s social gaming service, are hardly among the top 1,500 apps in any country.

Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 14, includes requirements for developers to add “Nutritional Privacy Labels” detailing what permissions applications request and what they plan to do with your data. “Transparency is the best policy,” says Apple, and that transparency means you can see what each of the applications you install will do. It also means that analytics companies can aggregate permission requests across the App Store, gaining an overview of privacy within Apple’s iPhone ecosystem.

I recently asked Apptopia for the top permissions for the top 1,500 free apps, and the company provided them for nine of the world’s largest mobile markets, including the US, China, Russia, India, Germany, and the UK. .

Almost all applications worldwide want permission to access your photos.

This is reasonably safe, depending on the photos you take. But by default, photos often include EXIF ​​(Exchangeable Image File Format) metadata that can have, you guessed it, location data. More than two-thirds of apps also want access to your camera, probably because they include some photographic capabilities.

In the US, 66% of apps want their location to the fore, too.

That means the app can access your current location while using it. This is relatively safe, although most people probably forget it, at least compared to apps that ask for your location in the background. 40% of apps in the US want that data, and that means they can read your data even when you’re not actively using the app.

This is, for example, the privacy label of Instagram, which collects a large amount of data in 17 different categories and uses it to target ads to you, among other purposes:

You can get more details on the App Store about exactly what an app wants by tapping on the privacy label. In the case of Instagram, you want both a “precise location” and an “approximate location.” The approximate location shares where you are within a few miles; the precise location basically takes you to a postal address. However, to find out exactly what you’ve granted, you’ll have to go into your phone’s Settings, find the app, and tap on the specific permission that you want to learn more about.

Another 40% of the top 1,500 apps on the US App Store want access to your microphone – useful if you want to talk to your apps, but weird too.

Do you really want to enter data in 40% of your applications by voice?

And another quarter request Bluetooth privileges, which may seem harmless but can be used as a sneaky way to get the location as developers create a device graph of connected peripherals.

Most of the apps in other countries have similar numbers as the US apps.

But not China.

While the top three requested permissions are identical, 91% of Chinese apps request access to photos vs. 78% of US apps 85% of Chinese apps request camera access; 68% of US apps do the same. 76% of Chinese apps ask for location; 66% of US applications.

And a small majority of apps request permanent access to the background location in China.

That’s the highest of any country, at least among which I have data: the US, UK, Russia, India, Indonesia, Germany, and Japan.

Interestingly, Apple Music permissions, which allow other apps to access and play music through your Apple Music subscription, are also higher in China, at around 17.4%. In most other countries, it is around 10%.

One permission that will be on people’s minds in the coming weeks is App Tracking Transparency, a permission that Apple requests from all apps that want to access an Ad Tracking ID (IDFA) to request from users at install the app. That will most likely be activated in iOS 14.5, which is already in beta, but will likely be released in the next few weeks.

Whether or not people turn it on will have a huge impact on mobile marketing and app monetization. And of course a lot of privacy from people.

Ultimately, what we are learning is that most people are concerned about their privacy and want to limit the information they digitally leak to businesses while browsing the web, doing their work, and enjoying their apps. In fact, more than 73% want more privacy and are willing to pay for it, according to a survey I conducted of 600 smartphone owners in February 2021.

The question is: do we care enough in daily practice to make that a reality?

Or should our chosen technology tools make it easier for us to define globally, once and for all, what we choose to share and what we choose to keep private?

“Hello Siri: keep my data private.”