Think Before Downloading That App

My new phone wasn't doing what it oughta so i asked one of the Tech guys at work to have a look and obviously he fixed it within minutes but as he handed it back to me he said: 'You sure got a lot of apps, you might want to delete a few for safety' which got us into a discussion about using apps instead of just going to the places website.
It never crossed my mind before but thinking about it, many apps are just neatly packaged versions of the website accessed via the phone rather than a browser but according to the Tech guy, that's the problem.
As double sourcing is our stock in trade, i asked another tech expert which is better, websites of apps which got the answer: 'The web obviously, i thought everyone knew that' to which i replied, everyone but me obviously.
The reason, so it turns out, although apps are vetted, once downloaded they collect much more tracking information about you then a website can including your location, what else is on your phone and what other devices are connected to your WiFi which information could then be passed on to advertising companies or anyone interested in collecting personal information.
Although Websites can spy or track you, it is not as easy for them to gain your confidential information and the browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Edge have much better security measures (paranoid by default as he put it) than the app's as each app is responsible for its own security updates and browsers allow you to hike up the privacy and can even block advertisements although not much love for Google Chrome which is a bit more forgiving to the tracking technologies.
The advice then is to consider whether you need to download an app to your phone and if you already have it, whether you can use the website instead and if you can, always go direct to the website.