iPhone apps phoning home at night


The Washington Post:

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -â€" once every five minutes.

This is an alarmist column, but it's interesting to know much data is being transmitted. It's speculating this is happening at night while the phone is charging to avoid performance issues.

The key point though is users have control over background tasks within the settings. I suggest considering why an app should be running in the background rather than simply when launched. If it adds value with important notifications, for example, I let it run. I think though it would be helpful to have a better handle on what apps are doing in the background beyond desired features.

An app featured in the article from Disconnect looks interesting. It's essentially a firewall proxy that monitors usage and lets you control outgoing connections. It reminds me of Little Snitch on the Mac.