Remove These Sketchy Android Apps That Are Tracking You Without Permission
A recent Buzzfeed article points out that several popular Android apps available on the Google Play Store collect and store sensitive user data without encryption or permission.
This particular case is more troubling than the previous one: the report features not only some of the most downloaded apps on the Google Play Store, but also those developed by Chinese companies that may be sharing the collected data with the Chinese government.
Which applications to uninstall immediately
These are the apps that were involved in the Buzzfeed investigation. If you have any of this installed on your phone, uninstall it now:
- Selfie camera
- Total cleaner
- Smart cooler
- RAM Master
- AIO flashlight
- Omni Purifier
- WaWaYaYa
- Emoji flashlight
- Remote control for Samsung TV (via Peel Technologies, Inc.)
How to avoid such applications
Don’t be discouraged if your app has been among the nearly 100 million downloads of these apps. Developers have muddled otherwise judgmental information such as the country of origin and the company that owns the app, which is usually alarming.
However, as the Buzzfeed investigation shows, each app was asking for too many permissions for apps, including “dangerous” permissions such as location data, access to phone sensors, or personal contact information. This is an indicator of a suspicious application.
Google has blacklisted six of the apps above – Selfie Camera, Total Cleaner, Smart Cooler, RAm Master, AIO Flashlight, and Omni Cleaner – in response to Buzzfeed reports and updated how it will evaluate permissions and developer accounts in the future , but even so, it seems too easy for attackers to trick the Google Play Store.
Here are our guidelines for choosing the right app downloads:
- Use a reliable mobile antivirus app to scan apps and files before installing them.
- Don’t download apps with very bad reviews.
- Also, pay attention to what the reviews actually say; companies can inflate their ratings with fake reviews to drown out negative ones. If you see any testimonials calling for suspicious behavior, false ads, etc., stay away.
- Look for apps with a lot of permissions or permissions that don’t make sense to the app. For example, the AIO Flashlight application requested 31 permissions in total. No legitimate flashlight app requires that many apps to run.
- Review the security policy of the application or application developer. This can often be found with a quick internet search if not provided openly. If the policy seems unreliable, is posted in a questionable location (like a random Selfie Camera Tumblr page ), or if there is no security policy, period, skip the upload.
- In general, don’t download apps from developers you don’t know. If so, search the app online and search for professional reviews and user reviews on tech sites and forums.
- Be extremely careful when downloading APK files from unofficial sources.
An application can pass some of the above parameters, but not completely pass others. For example, the Selfie Camera app was rated 4.5 stars on Google Play and had over 50 million downloads, but still requested 50 permissions, and its privacy policy was hidden on an unrelated Tumblr blog. This is a perfect example of why any third-party apps from developers you don’t already trust need to be thoroughly vetted.