Your favorite Android apps might be leaking your location

Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.

Using a niche weather , navigation , or similar location-hungry app? Your location data might inadvertently be going places you never signed up for.

No, this isn’t necessarily nefarious behavior on the app or its developers’ part. Instead, the culprit might be third-party advertising software quietly pulling the strings behind the scenes, as highlighted in an alarming new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

For reference, app developers use software development kits (SDKs) to add pre-built functionality to their apps. This helps because it eliminates the need to write code from scratch.

One type of SDK that developers often use is an advertising SDK. It allows said app to serve ads to its users, all while giving its developers the necessary tools to measure ad performance and monetization. Most of the apps that serve you ads likely make use of such SDKs.

According to the EFF’s report, many such advertising SDKs that are used by developers are now being flagged for collecting and sharing users’ precise location data.

Sharing that data with whom, you may ask? With a network of advertising companies and systems that “location data brokers use to track people.”

In the past, location information obtained from the advertising industry has been used for tracking US military personnel, ICE investigations, spy tools , and more, making the EFF report’s revelation all the more concerning.