You may be surprised to learn that your favorite mobile game collects your location and phone data to serve you advertisements. PrivacyGrade verifies which apps use your permissions for legitimate reasons and which only do to display ads.


Android apps require permissions for varying reasons. Although some of them make sense (e.g., location data for Foursquare), other apps still collect data even if it seems unrelated (e.g., why does Fruit Ninja collect your location data?).


PrivacyGrade assesses apps based on the data they actually collect and what users would expect them to. Apps with high grades collect data that meet user expectations (e.g., Path only collects the data it needs to), whereas apps with lower grades often collect data for advertising purposes (e.g., DrawSomething reads phone status and identity).

Check to see if your favorite app is still worthy of the title, or if the app has secretly collected data that it doesn't really need.

PrivacyGrade