Your favorite free mobile game could be sharing your data with Russia and China, Proton warns

A recent study by Proton has exposed how popular free mobile games may be transmitting sensitive user data to foreign servers in Russia and China. The analysis of the top 100 Android games, downloaded nearly 20 billion times worldwide, found that these apps commonly share personal information with ad-tech firms based in China, Russia, Israel, and Five Eyes nations.

This data collection puts users' privacy at risk, with minimal transparency or accountability in place. The affected games include well-known titles such as Block Blast!, Disney Solitaire, and Subway Surfers. The study analyzed download trends in May 2026, revealing that in the US, 15.8 million downloads of games sharing data with Chinese companies occurred, while 13.7 million downloads contained Russian trackers.

In the UK, 3 million downloads contained Chinese trackers and 2.7 million contained Russian trackers. Location tracking emerges as a particularly concerning issue, with US games containing location trackers downloaded 1.7 million times in May and 300,000 in the UK. Proton advises using VPNs with tracker-blocking capabilities or paying for ad-free games to safeguard user privacy.