> System apps on several handsets upload details of user interactions with the apps on the handset (what apps are used and when, what app screens are viewed, when and for how long).
I am too far away from Android development to make any claim about what "app screens" are. Is that android-lingo? Could someone please clarify?
Sounds like an attempt at phrasing for the general public.
Android apps have zero or more activities, each of which may be thought of as a single screen and a single Intent, which is a bit like a URL (and sometimes very much like a URL). A messenger or email app will typically have a main activity, an activity to view a single message, an activity to view a conversation with someone, perhaps an activity to view a single attached image, probably an activity to view and edit the application's settings, and so on.
What is sent is perhaps the app's name and a class name within the app for each activity that's started.
Exactly right. And you don't have to be a system app to access this information. Any app with sufficient permissions granted explicitly by a user can access these data (no root needed), and it may have legitimate reasons for doing it.
It sounds a lot like the screen events Firebase reports (a library by Google for analytics, among other things)
It allows you to know which screens a user views, but not the data on the screen. A pseudo-example would be like "User opened LoginScreen/LoginActivity at yyyy-mm-dd and stayed on that screen for X seconds"
I am too far away from Android development to make any claim about what "app screens" are. Is that android-lingo? Could someone please clarify?