Some Android apps can spy on you this way

Researchers at Northeastern University in Mbadachusetts (USA) presented a study in which they warned against the presence of applications for devices Android that make screenshots to send to third parties, as is the case of GoPuff .

The survey investigated whether the applications of smartphones spied on users and hidden mode audio or video for which they badyzed more than 17 thousand popular applications of Android including applications belonging to ] Facebook and more than eight thousand which send information to the social network

In the document, entitled Panoptism: characterization of the filtering of audio and video applications Android the experts badyzed the risks of security in applications of Android as well as software requiring unjustified permissions or sharing image and video with third parties to the 39, unbeknownst to users On this last aspect, the investigators discovered that there are applications that keep and send phone screen recordings to third parties . However, in the study, they found no evidence that applications activate the microphone or send recordings without authorization.

Of the 17,260 applications reviewed, more than nine thousand had permission to access the camera and microphone, and some of them sent the screenshots and screen recordings to domains owned by others.

One of the examples is GoPuff A Messaging App for people with cravings for junk food who managed user interactions and sent data to an AppSee affiliated domain , a company dedicated to mobile badysis . In this case, the video sent included a screen in which personal information was entered.

Following the discovery, the team of researchers contacted GoPuff the company then added to its rules that AppSee could receive personally identifiable information (PII) from users and remove the AppSee SDK of its applications for iOS and Android

In connection with this problem, the policy of Google Play states that users must always be informed of how whose information will be collected, a practice that would not be satisfied by applications such as GoPuff .

Researchers used automated programs for the study that performed actions on mobile phones, rather than on humans. In addition, during the first months of the investigation, the devices were close to the students and surrounded by conversations, but they were then isolated in a closet, which could have affected the conclusions of the study.

RL