By: Financial Times
July 7, 2021
Opioid addiction apps used by tens of thousands of people to aid treatment and recovery are accessing sensitive personal information that could be used to identify them, a new study has found.
The ExpressVPN Digital Security Lab study, published on Wednesday, examined the source code of 10 Android apps and found that many of them were accessing private data such as a user’s phone number, carrier and IP address.
When combined, this information can be used to identify users, who then risk being targeted by third parties such as advertisers or authorities. In some instances, information such as location data was found to be shared with Facebook and other third parties.
“This is the equivalent of walking into a medical clinic and the clinic sending your personal health information to Google and Facebook,” said Jonathan Stoltman, director of the Opioid Policy Institute, who served as catalyst for the research after hearing these tactics were standard.