Your favorite app is silently collecting your browsing history, Surfshark warns

Date:
Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:51:38 +0000

Description:
A new Surfshark study finds 45% of the world's most popular mobile apps
report collecting your browsing history, with social media apps being the worst offenders. Here is who is doing it, why, and how to stay private.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Nearly half of the top mobile apps collect your browsing history Social media apps are the worst offenders Avoiding in-app browsers can limit data collection You probably assume your web browser is the only app keeping tabs on where you go online. According to new research from Surfshark , that assumption is incorrect.

The cybersecurity firm analyzed 40 of the most popular Android and iOS apps and found that 18 of them, or 45%, report collecting users' browsing history in their app store privacy labels. In other words, nearly half of the apps
you open every day may be logging the websites you visit . Even the best VPN cannot fully stop an app from recording what you do inside its own walls, which makes understanding what you are signing up for more important than ever.

Surfshark the best cheap VPN Surfshark is a fast, easy-to-use VPN that seriously beats the competition when it comes to subscription pricing. Its two-year Starter plan works out at $2.49 a month (plus tax), but we think Surfshark One is the best value plan as it adds an antivirus, data breach monitor, and alternative ID tool starting from the equivalent of $2.79 a month. View Deal What Surfshark found Surfshark's team looked at 40 leading apps split evenly across four categories: generative AI, social media, e-commerce, and messaging.

For each one, the researchers checked whether its Apple App Store label reported collecting "Browsing History" and whether its Google Play label reported "Web Browsing History." You may like Meta's apps hoover up triple
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Social media came out as the biggest collector by far . Nine of the 10
social apps studied collect browsing history on at least one platform. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Pinterest do so on both Android and iOS, while Reddit, LinkedIn, and Snapchat collect it on Android only. Discord was the only social app that collected it on neither.

E-commerce came next, with half of the shopping apps analyzed collecting the data on at least one platform.

Messaging was less hungry, with only Rakuten Viber, Messenger, and LINE gathering it, echoing earlier findings on how much data messaging apps
collect .

In the generative AI category, Google Gemini was the only app of the 10 to report collecting browsing history. (Image credit: Future) NEW : Leave No Trace A weekly newsletter on digital privacy and online surveillance. What
to read next Thousands of iOS and Android VPNs are hiding behind fake
websites and useless privacy policies here's how to spot them Windscribe VPN CEO warns your favourite Facebook quizzes are actually stealing your bank details 10 million downloads but no website? New TechRadar data reveals how Android VPNs are gaming the system to avoid supporting users effectively

Leave No Trace investigates the companies and governments putting our digital freedom at risk and the people fighting back.

Subscribe now to get every edition delivered to your inbox every Friday, launching this September. Why apps want your browsing history The logic is straightforward: the more an app knows about where you go online, the more precisely it can target ads and shape the content in your feed.

As Surfshark's lead system engineer Karolis Kaciulis explains, many apps now route external links through their own "embedded browsers," so the moment you tap a link, they can track what you search for and look at.

The important thing to remember here is that most of these social media and shopping apps do not need your browsing history to provide their services.
The practice is not related to providing value to users, and simply takes place to benefit the app companies.

Kaciulis argues that consent for this is usually buried in the fine print,
and that the apps fighting hardest to keep you inside their own browser tend to be the ones selling ads rather than the ones that need your history to function. (Image credit: Surfshark) How to stay safe There is no single
switch that turns all of this off, but a few habits can go a long way.

The easiest is to sidestep in-app browsers : when you tap a link, use the "Open in default browser" option or paste the URL into your default browser, which stops the host app from watching where you go next.

Pair this with switching to a privacy-focused browser , and you'll be able to avoid a lot of the worst data-collecting practices without much effort. Today's best Surfshark deals +3 months free Surfshark 24 Months $2.49 /mth View at Surfshark Surfshark 12 Months $3.39 /mth View at Surfshark Surfshark
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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/your-favorite-app-is-silent ly-collecting-your-browsing-history-surfshark-warns


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