Meta's apps hoover up triple the data of Apple and Microsoft, new study finds

Surfshark found that Meta's apps declared the most data types on average The seven hungriest apps in the study were all Meta-owned The figures come from developers' own App Store privacy labels A new study from Surfshark has put a hard number on something privacy watchers have long suspected: among the biggest names in tech, Meta's apps are the hungriest for your personal data.

Of the 12 Meta apps included in the study, an average of 25 out of the possible 35 data types were collected.

That is more than three times as much as Microsoft and Apple gather on average, according to the research.

The company's apps sit far ahead of the pack, and the gap is stark enough that Surfshark 's team argues it reflects a purposeful choice rather than a technical necessity.

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View Deal Meta leads the pack, but Google is everywhere Surfshark's researchers examined 171 apps in the Apple App Store, split across Google (44), Apple (41), Microsoft (40), Amazon (34), and Meta (12), and counted how many of the 35 data categories each developer self-reports collecting.

Meta came out on top by a distance.

Its apps collect 25 data types on average, ahead of Google (17), Amazon (12), Microsoft (8), and Apple (7).

The gap widens at the extremes: the seven most data-hungry apps all belong to Meta, led by Meta AI on 33 data types, followed by Meta Horizon, Meta Business Suite, Meta Ads Manager, Messenger, Forum, and Facebook on 32 each.

This echoes an earlier finding that Meta's Messenger collects 32 of a possible 35 data types , nearly double the messaging-app average. (Image credit: Surfshark) Google 's story is about scale rather than intensity.