How to Detect Apps Leaking Your Data

One reason that smartphones and smartphone apps are so useful is that they can integrate intimately with our personal lives. But that also puts our personal data at risk. A new service called Mobilescope hopes to change that by letting a smartphone user examine all the data that apps transfer, and alerting him when sensitive information, such as his name or e-mail address, is transferred.

"It's a platform-agnostic interception tool that you can use on your Android, iOS, Blackberry, or Windows device," says Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher who created Mobilescope with fellow researchers David Campbell and Aldo Cortesi. Once a person has signed up for the service, Mobilescope is accessed through a website, not as an app installed onto a device. A user can use the site to see logs of the data transferred by the apps on their device. They can also specify "canaries," pieces of sensitive information such as a phone number, e-mail or name that trigger an alert if they are sent out by an app.