Researchers have found that many low-cost Android devices come with pre-installed apps that have high-level access to the system. Unlike apps from the Google Play Store, many of these are not subject to thorough checks and can serve as vectors for malware or privacy-invasive features. Researchers studying the African mobile device market focused on three brands selling Android devices under $100, all running Android Go Edition. To investigate, the team developed PiPLAnD, an automated framework … More → The post Your budget Android phone might be spying on you appeared first on Help Net Security.
Years back this was the case with the Blu R1 phone I had. It had an inbuilt system app that was not removable that would harvest “advertising” data.
I stopped recommending non brand name phones for this reason.
As opposed to the Google apps which definitely spy on you and even say so in their TOS?

