Is Your Android Phone Tainted?

"Many apps beam usage information-some of it enough to personally identify your phone-to marketers, behind your back. Programmers at Penn State cooked up TaintDroid (ew) to reveal the offenders and help you protect yourself from prying data miners."

I certainly don't have a problem if an app tells me upfront that they'll be accessing certain data for marketing. There is a line I think we all have as far as what is too much but I don't mind the collection of basic demographic information. If the app has built in ads, I suspect that is what the data is needed for: to drive those.

Then there's the other apps out there. The ones that break your trust and don't inform you of the data you're giving up. I think I'm going to install this and see if there are any apps on my phone that are collecting data without my permission. If there are, it may be time to clean my phone up a bit.

I disagree with Engadget though...I like the name!