Increasingly invasive mobile applications cause concern

The monitoring capabilities of mobile applications present a growing concern to mobile telephone users, who worry that the apps might be monitoring their activities and sharing their data, according to a survey conducted by the company Kaspersky Lab. Concerns by consumers regarding their activities on the internet being monitored are on the rise, with 61 percent of respondents feeling uncomfortable when sharing information about their location with websites and apps - a steep uptick from 39 percent recorded in 2016. These concerns are more than justified, according to Kaspersky Lab. The company experts discovered that applications not only have access to an enormous amount of data, but they are also running in the background without the users even knowing about it. According to survey results, 83 percent of Android applications enjoy access to users' sensitive data and 96 percent can start without permission. On the other hand, such risks can be easily mitigated with a few simple security measures, yet people don't embrace them. For instance, almost half of respondents (47 percent) concede that they don't check the permissions of their pre-installed mobile apps on devices with Android and iOS operating systems, and approximately one out of five users even fails to check permissions when downloading and installing new apps.