Google takes down 29 malicious Beautification apps found stealing Data

The paparazzi of taking selfies and editing then in some beauty apps and posting them on social media has become quite common these days. But do you really read the privacy policy and agreement provided on the app before continuing to it? Nowadays many OEMs are unveiling their latest smartphones with high-resolution front-facing camera modules and a variety of integrated ‘beautification’ features. But there are also thousands of third-party apps on photo editing where you can choose them and brighten up your skin tone and smoothen blemishes on facial features. But beware of these apps as they collect your private data from your smartphone but not all of them are in this list. So next time while you download one of these apps you have to be more careful.

As per the latest report by Android Police, Google took down a total of 29 malicious apps for Android that was advertised on the Google Play Store as beauty camera applications but carried out activities such as stealing the user’s pictures.

These apps were discovered by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which said that some of them have already been downloaded millions of times. Unfortunately, A large number of downloads are from Asia that is particularly in India. Th ese 29 apps were downloaded over 4 million times before they were removed from the Google Play Store, with three of them accounting for over 3 million downloads.

After installing some of these apps, they throw a full screen advertisements related to fake (and even pornographic) content, every time the device is unlocked. And some apps direct users to phishing websites developed with the aim of tricking users into giving away their personal information.

As per the report, these apps are listed on the Android security bulletin as ‘AndroidOS_BadCamera.HRX’.The top three apps are Pro Camera Beauty, Cartoon Art Photo, and Emoji Camera. And Other popular apps that were removed include Artistic Effect Filter, Selfie Camera Pro, and Horizon Beauty Camera. These apps look quite real as other apps.when you find they are some malicious apps they even hide its icon from the app drawer, making it quite difficult for (especially beginner) users to uninstall it from their smartphones. These apps were using packers, an archive compression method, that hid their contents from Google and other security systems.

Via