So any push to perforate commercial security systems and put millions of app users' data at risk of hacking would be a hugely contrarian move vs the incoming General Data Protection Regulation which will hike potential fines for data breaches to up to 4 percentt of a company's global turnover.
When TheIceBreak co-founder Christina Brodbeck was looking at the app's user data, she saw that there were co-founders actually using the app to communicate.
And those analytics companies in turn may not want to provide free services if they cannot tap an app's user data for their own purposes.
It's currently ramping up API auditing as it hunts down other developers that might have improperly shared, sold, or used data like how Dr. Aleksandr Kogan's app's user data ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica.
To begin, developers cannot sell ads in apps, collect user data for ads, share data with ad companies or distribute apps elsewhere.
Chun, who studies mobile security, recently coauthored a paper showing that many Android apps share user data, including location information, without making it clear to users.
Manuel Egele, a doctoral student at the Technical University of Vienna, and three other researchers examined how more than 1,400 iPhone apps handle user data.
Both the Obama and Romney mobile apps send user data to a variety of companies, to serve ads and analyze user behavior, according to an analysis of both by PrivacyChoice, a firm based in Santa Cruz.
