Researchers looked at top 1,100 free applications available in the Android Market. They found a surprising number of programs used unique identifiers such as the phone’s IMEI number. One concern is that these unique identifiers could be linked to Android users in databases. The researchers call their work the “initial but not final word on Android application security” The study follows up on work done by some of the same researchers who last year looked at 30 smartphone applications and found widespread sharing of location data and unique identifiers.”]