Security company Bitdefender Labs said that “user privacy is increasingly taking a backseat to profit for developers and advertisers”, as ad companies glean more data from users and developers look to work with multiple partners.

The company said that “more and more unknown third parties now have access to user browsing history, phone numbers, email address and everything they need to compile comprehensive and personalised user profiles”.

Bitdefender said that adware targeting Android devices “jumped 61 per cent worldwide in the five months through January”, while malware grew by 27 per cent. “While Android adoption increased steadily in the past five months, so has the number of malware and adware detections,” it noted.

The steepest climb for adware was reported from November to December, with Bitdefender postulating that “taking advantage of the holiday season, some developers thought to seize the moment to generate extra cash, betting hard that users don’t know how adware behaves”.

It noted that with adware becoming “more intrusive and more bent on collecting as much sensitive information as possible, the line between legitimate software and actual malware is more blurry than ever”.