A study of data collection by Android devices

A group of researchers at Trinity College in Dublin has released theresults of a study into the data collected by a number of Androidvariants. There are few surprises here, but the picture is stilldiscouraging.

We find that the Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme Androidvariants all transmit a substantial volume of data to the OSdeveloper (i.e. Samsung etc) and to third-party parties that havepre-installed system apps (including Google, Microsoft, Heytap,LinkedIn, Facebook). LineageOS sends similar volumes of data toGoogle as these proprietary Android variants, but we do not observethe LineageOS developers themselves collecting data norpre-installed system apps other than those of Google. Notably,/e/OS sends no information to Google or other third parties andsends essentially no information to the /e/OS developers.