Play Store has never been a 100% safe place, like any other app store. However, the efforts are notorious. One of the latest measures is about the future hiding app which has not received updates for more than two years.
Malicious apps are also removed on an ongoing basis, and now there’s been another raid. Google has removed from the Android App Store a series of apps that will collect user data such as emails, location, phone numbers, and more.
Google has removed dozens of popular apps from the Store, used by millions of users, after discovering that they were improperly collecting your data.
Information provided by The Wall Street Journal It reveals that the researchers described in this list of removed apps, weather apps, road radar apps, QR code scanners, prayer apps and more. These applications include a code that can collect information such as the user's exact location, email, phone numbers, and much more.
Apps that collect emails, phone numbers, exact locations and more
Behind the inclusion of this malware, Measurement Systems will allegedly have direct links with entities related to the national security of the United States. However, the company denies these allegations.
In a statement, Measurement Systems told the Wall Street Journal that "the claims you make about the company's activities are false... We are also not sure what Packet Forensics is. [empresa que estará no meio das ligações] Or how to contact our company.”
The investigation indicates that Measurement Systems paid programmers to add code to software development kits (SDKs) for the applications in question. The programmers, in addition to receiving money in return, also received detailed information from the users of their applications, which is a valuable resource for developing and modifying their applications.
The SDK was present in apps downloaded on at least 60 million mobile devices. One app developer said he was told that the code collects data on behalf of ISPs, with financial services and energy companies. Measurement systems are concerned with collecting data from countries in the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.
danger
A database that maps a person's actual email and phone number to an accurate GPS location record is particularly tedious as it can easily be used to run a service to look up a person's location history, knowing only your phone number or email, something that can be used to target journalists or dissidents. Or political opponents...
He said Joel Reardon, one of the investigators involved.
Although Google has removed these apps from its store, the apps are still installed on smartphones. However, there will be no alarm because the SDK will not work since the report.
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