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Sunbird relaunched its iMessage app for Android users after three years away

Sunbird Messaging is back on the Google Play Store, offering Android users blue bubble privileges in iMessage complete with reactions and high quality videos for $2.99 a month. Apple and Google have made cross platform messaging better in recent years with support for RCS, but Android users can still cause issues in iMessage group chats, […]

Sunbird relaunched its iMessage app for Android users after three years away

Android app developers may unknowingly expose their users' location information to advertisers and data brokers, according to new research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The organization warns that developers may not realize their apps are inadvertently sharing users' precise location data with third parties when they grant permission to the app.

This occurs due to default settings within third-party code, known as software development kits (SDKs). While advertising SDKs enable developers to monetize their apps, the trade-off is that users' location histories are shared with data brokers, who then monetize and sell that information to various entities, including militaries, governments, and intelligence agencies.

The EFF found that two popular Android apps, together downloaded over 60 million times, were quietly sharing users' location data. The organization urges developers to disable unnecessary data collection and disable default settings that allow third-party SDKs to inherit the app's permissions and collect users' location data.

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