Meta Leads Big Tech in Data Collection

Meta and Google have emerged as the most data-intensive Big Tech companies in a study examining 171 Apple App Store applications from Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.

Meta ranked highest, with its apps collecting an average of 25 of 35 possible data types, compared with Google at 17, Amazon at 12, Microsoft at eight and Apple at seven.
The seven most data-hungry applications were all from Meta. Meta AI collected 33 data types, while Meta Horizon, Meta Business Suite, Meta Ads Manager, Messenger, Forum and Facebook collected 32 each.

Google also demonstrated significant collection across its extensive ecosystem, accounting for 29 of the 40 most data-hungry apps. Amazon Alexa was the highest-ranking non-Meta application, collecting 28 data types.

Microsoft and Apple collected considerably fewer data categories overall. Apple covered 15 app categories yet consistently remained among the least data-intensive developers studied.

The findings underline a wider privacy issue: extensive data collection is not necessarily unavoidable for digital services. As AI becomes more personalized, data minimization, transparency, consent and privacy-by-design will increasingly determine consumer trust.