HIGHLIGHTS
- Some of these Android apps were downloaded millions of times from the Play Store.
- A large number of the download counts of these bad apps were from India.
- These apps push full screen malicious ads such as spam content and porn images on to the phone's screen.
Photo-editing apps have become all the rage now. The increasing craze of people to edit photos before posting them to various social media sites has led to an increase in the number of beautification apps on Play Store. Go to Play Store and you will find n number of apps promising to transform your everyday photos into perfect pictures. From skin texture correction to altering the colour of your skin, you have to ask and these apps are ready with all kinds of features. But not all of these apps are safe to use. Some of these apps have been found spying on you and apparently also stealing your private photos.
Google has removed 29 beauty apps from Play Store after it was confirmed by security firm Trend Micro that these apps pushed intrusive screen ads and stole your phone data including your private photos. The research report notes that some of these Android apps were downloaded millions of times with a large number of the download counts from India.
According to the report, you will not find any amiss in these apps at the time of installing them. It is only when you try deleting these apps that you will see the weird behaviour of the apps. These apps create a shortcut after being launched which is hidden from the app drawer making it difficult to uninstall them from the device.
Some of these apps push full screen malicious ads such as spam content and porn images on to the phone's screen via user’s browser. Some of these apps would redirect you to fake websites asking you for your private details like your address and phone number. During our analysis, we found a paid online pornography player that was downloaded when clicking the pop up, said the report.
Another set of these beauty apps were found stealing user's photo. Instead of uploading the user's photo to a designated server, the app would upload it to a private server and use them for bad activities such as using them on pornography websites or to create fake social media accounts.
Google has deleted these twenty-nine apps from its platform. Here is the full list:
-- Pro Camera Beauty
-- Cartoon Art Photo
-- Emoji Camera
-- Artistic effect Filter
-- Art Editor
-- Beauty Camera
-- Selfie Camera Pro
-- Horizon Beauty Camera
-- Super Camera
-- Art Effects for Photo
-- Awesome Cartoon Art
-- Art Filter Photo
-- Art Filter Photo Effcts
-- Cartoon Effect
-- Art Effect
-- Photo Editor
-- Wallpapers HD
-- Magic Art Filter Photo Editor
-- Fill Art Photo Editor
-- ArtFlipPhotoEditing
-- Art Filter
-- Cartoon Art Photo
-- Prizma Photo Effect
-- Cartoon Art Photo Filter
-- Art Filter Photo Editor
-- Pixture
-- Art Effect
-- Photo Art Effect
-- Cartoon Photo Filter
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