These days, our phones are jam-packed with apps. However, apps are more than clutter – they’re data collectors. Apps from China-based app developer ByteDance, such as TikTok, CapCut and Lemon8, track extensive details: your IP address, biometrics, messages, credit card numbers, people and places in your videos, information about the content you post and more. TikTok’s data privacy is so bad that it’s banned in many countries and on government devices in several others, including the US, the EU, Australia and Canada.

While harmful apps are the obvious ones to nix, experts also suggest you delete any app you aren’t using regularly. To ensure the app stops collecting and sharing your data, you must deactivate or delete your account first. Log in to each app and find the page where you can delete your account, then uninstall it from your phone.