Thousands of Android and iOS apps are leaking sensitive data, says report

Millions of passwords, GPS locations, and financial records are sitting unprotected in plain sight — and yours could be one of them.

Researchers at Appthority, a mobile security firm, scanned both Android and iOS mobile apps that used Firebase databases to store their users’ data. For the uninitiated, Firebase is a popular cloud-based backend platform for mobile and web applications. The company was acquired by Google back in 2014, so it’s found a real user base among some of the top Android developers.