Google removes over 500 ‘spying’ apps from Play Store

[sumitroy]

Google has removed over 500 apps that included mobile games for teenagers from its Play Store on account of a spyware threat.

The decision came after US-based cyber-security firm Lookout discovered more than 500 apps that could spread spyware on mobile phones, Fortune reported late on Wednesday.

According to Lookout, the apps used certain software that had the ability to covertly siphon people’s personal data on their devices without alerting the app makers. The impacted apps included mobile games for teenagers, weather apps, online radio, photo editing, education, health, fitness and home video camera apps.

Google removes over 500 ‘spying’ apps from Play Store

 

[Siva]

Is there a list of those apps somewhere?

 

[Sarkar]

Is there a list of those apps somewhere?

The Lookout Security Intelligence team has discovered an advertising software development kit (SDK) called Igexin that had the capability of spying on victims through otherwise benign apps by downloading malicious plugins. Over 500 apps available on Google Play used the Igexin ad SDK. While not all of these applications have been confirmed to download the malicious spying capability, Igexin could have introduced that functionality at their convenience. Apps containing the affected SDK were downloaded over 100 million times across the Android ecosystem

Igexin advertising network put user privacy at risk

Look out team has given only two example

 

[Siva]

It'll will help if they put the entire list online.