Mobile App Developers Scoop Up Vast Amounts of Data, Reports Say They can stream music, make restaurant reservations, and offer distractions for ornery children. But few things in life are free - least of all applications. Two new reports this week reveal how app developers are scooping up enormous amounts of data from mobile devices and serving up ads in unlikely places. Advertising revenues have long been the oil that greases the Internet. Mobile apps are its new frontier. Both reports nudge application developers to adopt standards for data collection and advertising. The Future of Privacy Forum, an advocacy group, on Wednesday, reported first the good news: Application developers are getting better at writing up privacy policies on both Google and Apple operating systems, the group concluded. But some still don't take that minimum first step, even when collecting sensitive information, like location; they included a game, Fruit Ninja Plus, and a photo app, Camera+. A private firm, Lookout Security, found far more invasive practices by the companies that serve up advertisements on behalf of app developers. Some pushed advertisements to the device notification bar, well beyond the confines of the actual application. Others inserted new icons or shortcuts on the mobile desktop and tweaked bookmarks settings. The proliferation of applications is staggering. Apple reported earlier this year that 25 billion applications had been downloaded on its iOS platform to date; Google estimated 20 billion had been downloaded on the Android platform. "Given the pace at which the mobile ecosystem is moving, it's important that standards are developed to ensure that private user data is accessed and managed appropriately," Lookout Security said in its report. It urged app developers to provide opt-out controls for when ads appear outside the walls of the application and provide explicit notification if the ad network intends to collect personal data including a user's name and phone number. The Future of Privacy Forum urged app developers to provide "enhanced notice" if the application is collecting information that users might not expect and to give users choice and control over what they share.