Today’s mobile apps are nothing short of incredible. However, the same sophisticated capabilities that enable these apps can expose individuals and enterprises to serious security risks by sharing a user’s data, location, web browsing history and social media behavior and even accessing permissions with other applications and services.
These behavioral insights are a gold mine for marketers. Unfortunately, they’re even more valuable to cybercriminals and hackers seeking user-access credentials and the organizational layout of your enterprise.
How risky are the apps on the devices your employees use every day? Our team of researchers at Marble Labs recently analyzed a random sampling of 50,000 apps on Google Play Store — everything from business and productivity apps to consumer apps and games. We dissected these apps to understand what they do, their permissions and their dynamic behavioral monitoring capabilities. Next we tracked where they send data and correlated these destinations with our Mobile Threat Database. Here’s a brief glimpse into what we discovered:
- Thirty percent of apps leak users’ personal data.
- Nine percent read the device’s call history and contact database.
- Twelve percent read the SMS messages on the device.
- 1.6 percent try to install other apps on the device.
In the vast majority of these instances, the user has no clue these processes occur. It’s safe to assume most IT staff don’t either.
Check out our Mobile Security App Podcast. If you have questions or would like to know more about dynamic threat analysis for mobile applications, contact Marble Security at info@marblesecurity.com.

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