ANDROID owners have been warned that apps they download on vacation may not be as secure as they are at home – even if they look and feel exactly the same.
Most apps are available worldwide and look completely identical no matter where in the world you choose to download them.
But experts have revealed that below the surface things could work very differently – and not necessarily for the better.
User privacy and security can vary significantly when using the same app from country to country, according to the University of Michigan.
A team investigated more than 5,600 popular apps and discovered hundreds with hidden modifications depending on the country.
127 of them had what are called “geo-differences” in the permissions requested.
49 of them made requests deemed “dangerous”.
And more than 100 had very different privacy policies depending on the country.
Apps in Bahrain, Tunisia and Canada have requested the most dangerous additional permissions, experts say.
“While our study corroborates reports of withdrawals due to government requests, we also found many differences introduced by app developers,” said study co-author Renuka Kumar.
“We found instances of apps with settings and disclosures that expose users to higher or lower security and privacy risks depending on the country they are downloaded from.”
The research also lifted the lid on the large number of geo-blocked apps – apps that can only be downloaded in certain countries.
They found that a total of 3,672 apps were blocked in at least one of the 26 countries included in the study.
Iran and Tunisia apparently had the highest blocking rates, with popular apps like Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, Flipboard and Google Books banned.
VPN apps were also often blocked in Turkey and Russia.
“Developer blocking was significantly higher than government-requested takedowns in all of our countries and app categories,” Kumar wrote on The Conversation.
“App stores allow developers to target their apps to users based on a wide range of factors, including their country and the specific features of their device.”
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