How app makers increasingly track your every move

As smartphones become ubiquitous, app makers are becoming more brazen about collecting personal data, say experts and privacy advocates. And while iPhones and Android devices have limited privacy settings, most consumers remain in the dark about what companies are collecting and how they are using that information. "With business models focused on advertisements and sharing information of others, we've seen massive amounts of tracking," says Norman Sadeh, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "There's been erosion of privacy over the past few years." Claire Gartland, a consumer privacy attorney at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), compared the smartphone app marketplaces to "the Wild West" when it comes to privacy regulations and says consumers are left on their own to protect their own personal data.