Last month, I began beta testing Duckduckgo’s App Tracker Protection.

Starbucks (509 attempts), Audible(603 attempts), and Kijiji (500 attempts) are the worst offenders in terms of numbers of attempts to send to third-party trackers in a single day. Audible has the most trackers, and sends information to 11 different trackers for some reason.

A typical week clocked 3207 blocked tracking attempts across 22 apps.

A lot of the tracking was also performed when I was not using the apps. Some apps I haven’t used in some time, for example I rarely go to Starbucks, or open the app. When I do however, it spikes, but it also seems to send information whenever I’m simply using my phone. I found similar behaviour with several other apps on my phone. The apps track and send out information to various services when the phone is unlocked or awakened.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be reevaluating the apps I use, and begin culling.