Security and privacy is every traveller's desire, especially when they use apps to book flights.
Company Surfshark scoured over 200 apps to find out which flight booking apps shared travellers' data the most, and the ones that you should use instead.
Surfshark revealed that it created a comprehensive list of apps from a variety of categories using different sources for the study, including tech publications, personal finance sites, information sites, and app popularity ratings.
The team then checked the privacy details section of each one on the Apple App Store to see what segments of data it collected from users.
They colour-coded the segments according to the type of data, which includes the likes of location, financing information, personal identifiers, and search history.
"The most and least data-hungry apps were determined based on the total count of data segments collected by each app.
If apps were tied to the number of segments, those collecting data across more categories were deemed more data-hungry," it said in a press statement.
According to the data, the top 3 most data-hungry flight booking apps were Priceline (that require 23 data segments), Expedia (16) and Orbitz (16).
Anonymity intact
The least intrusive flight booking apps were SkyScanner, which requires 11 data segments. The app allows travellers to view deals across flights, hotels and car hire to book the perfect trip.
SkyScanner’s also launched a Covid-19 interactive map to help travellers learn which countries are allowing travel and which countries are restricting visitors due to the pandemic.
Kayak (10) is another app to consider using if you have privacy concerns. The app searches hundreds of other travel sites at once to find the information you require for flights, hotels and car hires.
Momondo (10), a travel fare aggregator and travel fare metasearch engine, is also popular.