20% of Android Apps Grant 3rd Parties Access to Private/Sensitive Info, Study Says

Some 20 percent of applications in the Android market grant a third party application access to private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes such as identity theft, mobile banking fraud and corporate espionage, according to SMobile Systems.

About five percent of applications have the ability to place a call to any number, without requiring user intervention. Dozens of applications have the identical type of access to sensitive information as known spyware, while two percent of market submissions can allow an application to send unknown premium SMS messages without user intervention, SMobile Systems says, after analyzing more than 48,000 Android apps.

Nearly 10,000 Android applications give third party apps access to private or sensitive information, in total.

link