A study conducted by Doug Leith, a computer security researcher at Trinity College, a research center at the University of Dublin (Ireland), takes stock of the amount of data sucked into our smartphones . As part of his investigation, the expert examined in detail how much data is recovered by an iPhone 8 and a Pixel 2.
Doug Leith's report specifies that the two smartphones regularly collect so-called “telemetry” data to send them to remote servers managed by Apple and Google. In particular, both terminals monitor whether you enter a SIM card, which applications you are using and which features are being used. This monitoring continues even when the phone is on standby or when the user has not given their explicit consent.
GOOGLE COLLECTS 1.3TB OF DATA EVERY 12 HOURS ON ANDROID
“Phone IMEI, hardware serial number, SIM card number, phone number etc. are shared with Apple and Google ” explains Doug Leith. Data is transferred every 4 minutes 30 secondson remote servers without the user being aware of it. Apple primarily collects information from Siri, Safari, and iCloud. For its part, Google sucks data from Chrome, the Google search bar, YouTube, Google Docs, Safetyhub, Google Messenger and the system clock. The researcher measured the data collected during the first boot following a factory reset, when a SIM card is inserted when the smartphone is in standby or off, when the user goes to the settings, when the geolocation is enabled / disabled and when the user logs into the Play Store or the App Store.
Verdict: Android collects on average 20 times more personal data than iOS. Android transmits 1MB of data to Google when starting the smartphone. For its part, an iPhone sends only 42 KB at startup on Apple's servers. When an Android smartphone is on standby, it still collects 1MB every 12 hours. An iPhone on standby only needs 52 KB of data over 12 hours. On average, Google collects 1.3 TB of data on its US users in 12 hours , compared to 5.8 GB for Apple.