US reports revealed that Google pulled dozens of applications used by millions of users, after it discovered that it secretly collected their data.
Researchers have discovered that weather apps, highway radar apps, QR scanners, prayer apps and others contain code that can harvest a user’s exact location, email and phone numbers, along with more data, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. American Journal.
The newspaper added that the apps pulled from the Google Play store were manufactured by Measurement Systems, a company said to be linked to a Virginia defense contractor that does cyber intelligence and more for US national security agencies.
According to the newspaper’s report, the applications have been downloaded on at least 60 million smart devices running the “Android” operating system.
The code in the apps was discovered by researchers Serge Eagleman of the University of California at Berkeley and Joel Reardon of the University of Calgary, who disclosed their findings to federal regulators and Google.
Eagleman told the Wall Street Journal that it could “without a doubt qualify as malware.”
Measurement Systems has also reportedly requested data from the developers of these apps mainly from the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.
Measurement Systems’ domain is registered by a company called Volstrom Holdings, which deals with the US federal government through a subsidiary called Packet Forensics LLC.
And the “Wall Street Journal” report pointed out that “Measurements Systems” denied all these allegations.
“The allegations you make about the company’s activities are false,” she said in a statement to the American newspaper. “Moreover, we are not aware of any communications between our company and US defense contractors, nor are we aware of a company called “Vostrom,” and we are not clear about what Packet Forensics is or how it is related. with our company.”
Google bans apps suspected of taking data from millions of Android users
