Is Best Buy safe to use?

Best Buy integrates 7 third-party SDKs spanning analytics, security, and infrastructure. It collects data linked to your identity including Location, Identifiers, and Usage Data. It does not include any advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Best Buy need?

Best Buy requests 12 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always & When In Use), Calendars, Speech Recognition, Face ID, Save to Photo Library, Reminders, Bluetooth, and Bluetooth Peripheral.

What data does Best Buy collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Best Buy collects data linked to your identity including Location, Identifiers, and Usage Data. It collects Usage Data and Diagnostics not linked to your identity.

How many SDKs does Best Buy have?

Best Buy integrates 7 third-party SDKs. 2 for analytics, 1 for infrastructure, and 3 for other. None are for advertising or attribution.

Does Best Buy access your location?

Yes. Best Buy requests location access. The developer states: "We will use your location to find nearby stores and show product availability".

Does Best Buy access your camera or microphone?

Best Buy requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "This lets you use our augmented reality features, scan products in-store, and video chat with employees". Microphone access is for "This lets you search using your voice and video chat with employees". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Best Buy run in the background?

Yes. Best Buy registers 4 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Best Buy?

Other shopping apps include Harbor Freight , AE + Aerie , Afterpay , ALDI Grocery Pickup & Delivery , AliExpress , and Victoria's Secret . Each app takes a different approach to shopping and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Shopping · Privacy report

Best Buy: Tech Deals & Savings

Free · ★4.9 · Best Buy Co., Inc.

Is Best Buy safe?

It leans heavily on third-party trackers.

Our take. Best Buy is built with more third-party tracking code than 20% of the shopping we have scanned.

Privacy footprint · vs 80 shoppingModerate

Trackers from other companies2 · some

typical shopping: 5

Data the app links to you3 types · little

typical shopping: 8 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Best Buy links 3 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Best Buy ties to your identity.

LocationIdentifiersUsage Data

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 1 company.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🏢Other third partiesanalytics

A third-party SDK.

SDKs

How it compares

Where it sits among shopping.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one shopping app. Best Buy sits to the lower left, lighter than most.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 7 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 2 are third-party trackers.

2analytics

5standard libraries

2 of the 7 are third-party trackers. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

Other third partiesanalytics

Salesforce Marketing Cloud · Salesforce Marketing Cloud SDK

Standard libraries5 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v26.3.20, 2026-04-04.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 80 shopping in our corpus. Trackers: median 5. Data linked to you: median 8.