Contacts and Social Graphs

[Jahangir307]

Access to your contacts allows apps to:

Map your social circle

Match users with mutual contacts

Enable referral-based growth

Social media platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, use contact data to vietnam phone number list recommend friends or connections, but this same data is sometimes mined for advertising correlations and third-party sharing.

6. Browsing and Search Histories
Even if you’re not using a desktop browser, your phone captures:

Websites visited

Search engine queries

Click-through patterns

Time spent on pages

Ads viewed and clicked

Apps with embedded browsers (like Facebook and TikTok) may also log your activity without you realizing it.

Where Is This Data Coming From?
Understanding the sources of data collection reveals just how entangled the data web has become. It's not only the apps you download but the very framework of your phone that’s part of the equation.

1. Apps
Every app you install on your phone is a potential data collector. Apps may ask for permissions to access your camera, microphone, contacts, location, and more. Even seemingly simple apps like flashlight tools have been caught collecting excessive data for monetization.