Is Rakuten safe to use?

Rakuten integrates 28 third-party SDKs spanning advertising, analytics, and media. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Financial Info, Location, and Contact Info and 6 more categories. It includes 5 advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Rakuten need?

Rakuten requests 18 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always), Location (Always & When In Use), Calendars, Motion & Fitness, Speech Recognition, Face ID, Save to Photo Library, Reminders, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Peripheral, Siri, Apple Music, and HomeKit.

What data does Rakuten collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Rakuten collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, User Content, Search History, Browsing History, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics.

How many SDKs does Rakuten have?

Rakuten integrates 28 third-party SDKs. 4 for advertising, 1 for attribution, 4 for analytics, 1 for social integration, 1 for infrastructure, and 16 for other.

Does Rakuten use Facebook tracking?

Yes. Rakuten includes 4 Facebook SDKs: Facebook AEM, Facebook SDK, Facebook Login, and Facebook Share. These are used for ad measurement, attribution, and integration with Facebook's advertising platform (developers.facebook.com).

Does Rakuten use Google SDKs?

Yes. Rakuten includes 3 Google or Firebase SDKs: Google Ads Conversion, Firebase Analytics, and Google App Measurement. These are used for ads, analytics, and cloud services.

Does Rakuten access your location?

Yes. Rakuten requests location access. The developer states: "Your location is used to alert you when there are Cash Back deals nearby.".

Does Rakuten access your camera or microphone?

Rakuten requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "We use the camera for photo uploads and bar code scanning". Microphone access is for "It appears this merchant requires permission to use your Microphone". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Rakuten access your contacts?

Yes. Rakuten requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "Please allow access to contacts to earn Cash Back.".

Does Rakuten run in the background?

Yes. Rakuten registers 3 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Rakuten?

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

Rakuten: Cash Back & Deals

Free · ★4.8 · Rakuten Ebates

Is Rakuten safe?

It collects a lot of your data, and shares it with trackers.

Our take. Rakuten carries 9 third-party trackers and its own label declares it links 10 categories of your data to you. It collects a lot itself, and shares a lot with outside companies.

Privacy footprint · vs 80 shoppingHeavy

Trackers from other companies9 · a lot

typical shopping: 5

Data the app links to you10 types · a lot

typical shopping: 8 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Rakuten links 10 categories of your data to you.

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

PurchasesFinancial InfoLocationContact InfoUser ContentSearch HistoryBrowsing HistoryIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnostics

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 5 companies.

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.

🇺🇸MetaAdvertising

Facebook advertising SDKs, built to link app activity to Facebook and Instagram ad profiles.

SDKs

🏢Other third partiesadvertising

A third-party SDK.

SDKs

🇺🇸SingularAttribution

Marketing attribution and analytics.

SDK

🏢Monitoring SDKAnalytics

Crash and performance monitoring.

SDK

🇺🇸GoogleAnalytics

Firebase, AdMob and Google analytics SDKs, built to record how you use the app and serve ads.

SDK

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. Rakuten sits to the right, carrying more third-party tracking than most.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 28 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 9 are third-party trackers.

4advertising

1attribution

4analytics

19standard libraries

9 of the 28 are third-party trackers. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

MetaAdvertising · USA

Facebook AEM · Facebook SDK · Facebook Login

Other third partiesadvertising

Google Ads Conversion · Google App Measurement · Sprig (UserLeap)

SingularAttribution · USA

Singular

Monitoring SDKAnalytics

Datadog

GoogleAnalytics · USA

Firebase Analytics

Standard libraries19 · 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 v13.5.0, 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.