It shouldn’t surprise anyone that our phones monitor our online activities and share data with third parties. However, many don’t know that our phones connect to remote servers even when we aren’t using them. A researcher recently experimented to determine the worst offender between iOS and Android when it comes to contacting foreign servers when idle. Neither platform is an outright winner.
Researcher unravels how Android and iOS devices snoop on you even when idle
The experiment conducted by Cybernews journalist Ernestas Naprys aims to find out which platform has better app security. He installed the top 100 apps from the official app stores on a factory-reset iPhone SE and a factory-reset Samsung Galaxy A52s, opened every app at least once, gave them the permissions they asked for, and left the devices idle. He also created or connected Google, Apple, and social media accounts with some apps.
During this time, Naprys traced every outgoing connection the devices made to external servers. He found that “the iPhone was 42% more active in browsing the web by itself compared to the Android phone.” The former sent out an average of 3308 queries per day, while the latter sent 2323 queries. However, this is just a part of the story. Android isn’t as secure as it seems. It made more connections to “unfriendly countries” than the iPhone.
According to Naprys, almost 60% of queries from the iPhone were made to Apple servers located in various parts of the world. It also contacted Google (12% of queries) and Meta (4%) a lot more than other firms. The Galaxy phone, on the other hand, contacted Android maker Google only 24% of the time. Facebook (12%) and Microsoft (11%) were other top destinations. Queries to Apple servers “were practically non-existent” on the Android phone.
Another interesting takeaway was how the iPhone turned down the activities of social media apps. It only made 20 queries per day to Facebook, while the figure for the Android phone was 200 queries. TikTok generated only 36 queries across five days on the iPhone. On Android, the social media platform generated almost 800 queries per day. Snapchat was an exception though, remaining more active on the iPhone during the experiment.
The devices contacted servers in Russia, China, and other countries
Another area where Android fared worse is the location of servers it contacted. The device contacted servers in Russia and China more than the iPhone. Naprys says the Samsung phone reached out to Russia around 13 times a day and China around 5 times. In comparison, the iPhone’s queries never landed in China, while it reached out to a server in Russia six times in five days. All of those queries were made during the day.
“Part of the explanation could be the difference in the top 100 app lists,” Maprys explains. He says that none of the iPhone apps were blatant adware. They represented big platforms behind them and were generally useful. On the other hand, many Android apps were adware that offered no value. That said, Maprys speculates that “this may also be due to stricter Apple policies for developers in its closed ecosystem regarding privacy in general.”
Long story short, neither Apple/iOS nor Google/Android stops snooping on you when your phone is at rest. iPhones may connect to servers in unfriendly countries less often than Android phones, but it may also depend on the apps you use. You have to remain vigilant to safeguard your online privacy. Never install apps from unknown sources and grant permissions that aren’t necessary for their normal functioning.