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"30 selfie and beauty camera apps on the Google Play store have been found to collect data, send phishing links, run background ads, and more"
According to a new report, certain camera apps available on the Google Play store have been secretly collecting your data, running malicious ads, spying, and sending you to other phishing websites. The report comes from Cybernews, which analysed about 30 selfie and beauty camera apps and discovered that these apps are collecting data from users. These apps have been collectively downloaded on more than 1.4 billion devices, and are still available on the Google Play store. Most of these apps are from developers based in China and Hong Kong. One of the developers, Meitu, maintains a top rank on the Google Play store and has one of its apps installed on more than 300 million devices.
It was also discovered that one of the apps in the list would automatically turn on the camera without asking for permission. Another app was found to have sent pornographic links to users and ultimately redirect them to phishing sites. Some of the apps request for more than 7 permissions, most of which are irrelevant to any beauty app. One such app asks for 40 permissions from the user. Permissions for recording audio, location, reading phone status, etc, are being requested as well.
Below is a list of the apps that you must delete from your phone immediately: