Recently CyberNews, a team of privacy enthusiasts, reported a secret network of 27 app developers in the Google Play store. According to the report, these developers have rolled out 101 applications to the platform and have over 69 million downloads combined. Apparently, the network is:
Copying each other’s apps, stealing apps from popular developers, and committing other fraud.
One of the biggest giveaways were the names that these developers opted for. All of them have a two-part Western name, such as Alex Joe, Virgilo Malley, Arrow Frankie, Armel Bilton, Daniel Malley, etc. Based on this, CyberNews have dubbed them as a two-name app developer network, or 2NAD for short.
CyberNews discovered that all the applications ask for an immense amount of dangerous permissions putting user’s privacy at risk. All of them have a similar Privacy Policy, copies of which are published on Google docs.
They found the correlation between these 27 developers by analyzing the websites listed for each app (all have incomplete firebases), APKs (some were duplicate, others were stolen), and the privacy policy.
Based on the privacy policy, that most users have agreed to, the developers can:
- Take pictures and record videos.
- Track your cellular network information, phone accounts, and status of calls.
- See and edit your contacts, see and edit your files, and check your phone status.
- Find your exact location.
Most of these bizarre permissions have nothing to do with the nature of application. The only way to mitigate the danger is by deleting the applications immediately. For more information, refer to CyberNews’ official report to see if you are at risk.
WHAT ARE THE APPS??? HAIN??
She has named the developers though but if you still require further detail go the embedded link in the last line
@ELI
it means you’ll have to go to that link in order to know about those apps but it’d be much appreciated to share names of those apps in order to save time your readers.
you should have disclosed those apps for ease of readers