Over 40% of the risky applications on Apple and Google’s app stores were developed in the United States, online security firm Marble Labs found out. The apps are deemed dangerous if they can use the users’ personal data without their knowledge, including sending it to third parties, uploading their contacts to remote servers, or sending their browser history through the web.

Risky apps also in clude the ones that defraud people with premium-rate text messages, lead them to malicious phishing sites or show unwanted ads. The recent study scanned over 1 million of Android and iOS apps, and it turned out that 42% of “dangerous” apps were developed in the United States.

China, Korea, India and Taiwan altogether generate less malicious and risky apps than the United States. This disproves a belief that Chinese or Russian app developers create most of the dangerous apps. However, the latter may be true for malware targeting jailbroken iPhones or rooted Android devices, since the study was only focused at apps that are available on legitimate app stores.

The study suggests that the American developers are responsible for the largest number of malicious apps because of the high number of apps being created in the US. The study in question also ranks countries by the likelihood that their apps are malicious or highly risky. This means that the table provides the percentage of apps developed in those countries that provide cause for concern.

According to the table, China is the riskiest country, with almost 9% of apps developed there being deemed dangerous. The second place is taken by Taiwan (7), followed by Singapore (4%), while only 1% of US-developed apps cause concern.

Finally, the security experts point at the different grades of danger. Of course, if your contacts are uploaded to a server without your knowledge, it is a serious privacy intrusion. However, this often happens because of a developer not understanding (or willfully disobeying) privacy laws, rather than due to full-blown cyber crime.

Finally, the experts explain that a problem with private data still persists, as another study found out that 85% of apps cannot clearly explain how they collect, use and disclose personal data. At the same time,it is not the same level of danger as apps developed with malicious intent to steal data, install malware or defraud users.