Lately, the Google Play Store has become quite dangerous for those who don't understand basic security principles. The company has had to remove 29 photo apps that were capable of stealing user information through scams and phishing.
Beauty apps that turned out to be dangerous
Trend Micro's security blog has published a list of 29 malicious apps that masqueraded as beauty tools for photos but concealed serious security vulnerabilities with the clear intention of stealing your data . Most worryingly, three of these apps have been downloaded over a million times , and another eleven have accumulated over 100.000 downloads, meaning the number of affected users is far greater than you might imagine.
The way these apps operated was similar in most cases, as they displayed a full-screen ad when the user unlocked their device, an action that inevitably led them to an external website that often displayed adult content . Given that the ads appeared full-screen and only when the device was unlocked, users could hardly connect the advertising problem to the app causing it, so many never managed to locate the source of the issue.
If the user reached the malicious website through advertising, it invited them to enter some personal information such as addresses and phone numbers, and that is where the problems began.
Theft of personal photos
But things got darker with another pack of applications that were in charge of applying beauty effects to selfies. And it is that, when uploading the image to the application servers to improve the image, the service returned an error message in nine different languages. A simple mistake? No. In reality, what the application had achieved was to obtain a photo of your face thanks to the fact that you yourself had provided it, with the aim of creating a large database of photographs of people and using them en masse when creating fictitious profiles for other criminal activities.
List of beauty apps that are dangerous for your privacy
Trend Micro has published a list of 29 malicious apps that compromise user security, indicating that Google's efforts cannot currently be relied upon to provide peace of mind against these types of threats. The 29 apps you should avoid and remove (if you have any installed) are:
- Pro Camera Beauty
- 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