New Delhi: Google has removed dozens of apps from Play Store after they were found to contain hidden code intended to collect personal user data, including email address, phone number, precise location, etc.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, a research revealed that a software development kit developed by Measurement Systems could also scan for WhatsApp downloads.
Among the banned apps are Muslim prayer apps which were downloaded over 10 million times, a barcode scanning app and a highway speed trap detection app. The QR code-scanning app was found to include a data-scraping code.
The company is linked to a Virginia defence contractor, which reportedly paid to develop them to include its code in their apps to extract users’ data.
The invasive code found in the banned apps were discovered by Serge Egelman and Joel Reardon. They founded an organization ‘AppCensus’, which checks mobile apps for privacy and security.
The duo said they had reached out to Google with their findings last year.
“A database mapping someone’s actual email and phone number to their precise GPS location history is particularly frightening, as it could easily be used to run a service to look up a person’s location history just by knowing their phone number or email, which could be used to target journalists, dissidents, or political rivals,” wrote Reardon in a blog post.
Google didn’t immediately take action, and removed the apps from Play Store last month only.
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