Behind the kilometers swallowed and the calories burned, a fitness app collects a quantity of personal data which goes far beyond simple sports monitoring. She’s tracking you.
Sports applications have become part of the daily lives of millions of French people, whether to record a run, plan a training program or share a bike ride. Practical, motivating and often free, they support every effort and transform the smartphone into a pocket coach. But a recent study shows that these tools can also become real vacuum cleaners for personal data.
The analysis was conducted by VPN company Surfshark, which examined sixteen popular iPhone fitness apps based on privacy information displayed on the App Store. Apple requires developers to detail the types of data collected, thus making it possible to compare practices. On average, the services studied recover 12 types of data among the 35 categories defined by Apple, a volume which includes identifiers as well as usage, diagnostic or device-related data.
The most sensitive point, however, concerns sharing with external actors. “Out of 16 fitness apps, 75% share user data with third parties”said Surfshark. The company specifies the nature of this mechanism: “This is called tracked data, where “tracking” means linking data collected by your app to third-party data.” Concretely, the information from your sessions can be crossed with other databases in order to supply targeted advertising, marketing analysis tools or personalization systems.
Among the well-known apps in France, certain sports platforms stand out for the extent of the data used beyond their main functions, notably Strava, whose model is largely based on the community dimension and detailed analysis of activities. Services linked to major sports equipment brands, such as Nike, are also among those that exploit personal data for advertising purposes, including information considered sensitive, according to the study. Within the panel analyzed, one application stands out very clearly in terms of the volume of data recovered, with 24 distinct types declared, a large part of which is considered not essential for basic operation. This is Fitbit, which is today, according to Surfshark, the most data-intensive fitness app.
Fortunately, there is a way to avoid this intrusion. On iPhone, but also on Android, it is recommended to check, before downloading the application, the option to refuse advertising tracking between applications and services. Although this choice does not prevent internal data collection, it does limit sharing with third parties.
