Study Finds Android Shares More Data With Google Than iOS Does With Apple

There is a popular saying which says that if you aren’t paying for the product, then there is a good chance you are the product. This is kind of true with companies like Google or Facebook where their services are mostly free, but in exchange your data is collected and sold to advertisers who create personalized and targeted ads.

This is why it doesn’t really come as a surprise to learn that when it comes to collecting data on its users, a recent study conducted by Doug Leith, a professor of computer science at Trinity College and who also serves on the college’s chair of computer systems, he found that Android shares about 20x more data with Google than iOS does with Apple.

Based on his findings, it is estimated that on startup, an Android device sends about 1MB of data to Google, while an iOS device sends 42KB to Apple. It was also estimated that after 12 hours, Android collectively gathers 1.3TB of data versus iOS which collects about 5.8GB. Unsurprisingly, Google isn’t too thrilled at this study.

In a statement made to ArsTechnica, a Google spokesperson said, “We identified flaws in the researcher’s methodology for measuring data volume and disagree with the paper’s claims that an Android device shares 20 times more data than an iPhone. According to our research, these findings are off by an order of magnitude, and we shared our methodology concerns with the researcher before publication.”

We can’t say with 100% certainty if the researcher’s methodology was flawed or wrong, but if you are curious about the study and want to give it a read yourself, you can find it in its entirety here.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones, General
Tags: Android, Google, iOS, Privacy, study