While the world is advancing with a rapid rate when it comes to technology, one thing users are very conscious about now is making sure that their identity and data remains secured and is not transmitted to any third parties without their consent.

However, what we are about to tell you might come off as a shock or you probably expected it already considering how it’s a business now to share user data among different parties for several targeting purposes.

A group of researchers from UK and Ireland found that many Android smartphone manufacturers are responsible for sharing user data to several other parties.

The manufacturers specifically include Xiomi, Samsung, RealMe, Huwaei, LineageOS and /e/OS which are leveraging Android OS to provide a de Googled experience and long term support. The analysis revealed that the mobile companies not only collected data like telemetry information, data usage details, user’s information etc. to the device vendors, it was also shared between several large tech firms like Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. which used this for their own purposes like ads targeting.

While Apple has provided an option for users to decide if they allow applications to collect their data according to the new App Tracking Transparency feature which was launched with its current software update. Android however, does not provide any such features, for now. Users have no option to say no to this practice and their data is silently collected.

However, while people may believe that uninstalling specific applications which might collect data will work the magic, the twist is, that Android allows several applications to collect user’s data which the users might not even use or notice is existence in their phone and such devices will not be uninstalled because they are pre built in the operating system.

Changing Google accounts for advertising identifiers won’t work too because the system will link back your new email ID to the device you use.

While privacy conscious users are very concerned about the data tracking from their phones, a lot of users have no idea how fast and in bundles their information is being collected, tracked and shared.

From our point of view, user’s despite of the phone software they use should have the right to decide whether they want their information and data to be collected or not, because in the end its their right to do so.

Read next: Internet Freedoms Continue to Decline Amid Tech Crackdown