We all benefit from the technology we use nowadays; we cherish the technology and constantly get engaged with the usage of the technology. But a dark side of the technology we don’t know exists in the midst of services we get from the new innovations and new developments. We don’t know that we are being manipulated, used, listened, spied, watched, and taken advantage of services we get to make selling.

The research was conducted by the Northeastern University’s some academics who set out to find out whether our phone is secretly looking or listening to us in order to make the decision on which ads to throw to us. Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned by the Congress on the conspiracy of Facebook using private data to manipulate the user base for their benefits.

The study found out that at least our phone is not spying on us in a proper way, but there is something going on. The research was done on 17,260 Android phones and everything was monitored; the researchers found negative instances where the phone’s microphone was turned on automatically for apparently no reason or send any kind of voice recording. But surprisingly, they did find out that few apps were sending the screenshots of the phone to the third parties, which is a kind of spying only. Probably, a new way to spy without raising any eyebrows!

After series of events like Cambridge Analytica, Gmail was read by third party and researchers found out the new approach taken by the third parties is to take the advantage of our privacy and channelize the marketing schemes according to our preferences. This makes sure that an average users are taken advantage and they can’t do anything about it.

Researchers suggest that Android devices have an alarming privacy risk and their app ecosystem is not safe at all. In Android, any app can ask for media permission which is used for image and video sharing to the third party without the consent of the user.