Google has eliminated plenty of fashionable Android apps from its Play Store after they were discovered to violate its personal data assortment guidelines. The International Digital Accountability Council (IDAC) knowledgeable Google that Princess Salon, Number Coloring and Cats & Cosplay, which collectively have over 20 million downloads, were breaching firm coverage, resulting in their elimination.
“The practices we observed in our research raised serious concerns about data practices within these apps,” IDAC’s president Quentin Palfrey stated. “We applaud Google for taking steps to enforce on these apps and the third-party data practices within these apps.”
As Palfrey suggests, it isn’t the app’s code itself that violated Play Store guidelines, however the third-party frameworks that they’re constructed upon. The apps used variations of the Unity, Appodeal and Umeng SDKs, all of which collected Android ID and Android Advertising ID data. In doing so, it was attainable for them to violate Google’s privateness safety rules.
Privacy breach
It doesn’t look like these violations were intentional and it’s not attainable to inform how a lot, if any, user data was taken by the three apps in query. However, as a result of these apps were aimed toward children, any potential breach, significantly one like this that could possibly be used to trace customers, must be taken very severely,
At least two of the builders of the eliminated apps, Creative APPS and Libii Tech, nonetheless have apps accessible by way of the Play Store and variations of the eliminated apps can nonetheless be downloaded from APK websites. Versions of the apps printed by way of the App Store didn’t seem to include the identical privateness violations as these accessible on Android gadgets.
There are practically three million apps accessible from the Play Store, with 1000’s extra added on daily basis. For Google, making certain that its privateness protocols are adhered to by every one represents an enormous enterprise.
Recently, safety agency Avast uncovered 21 adware apps on the Google Play Store, a lot of them disguised as video games and gaming platforms, which may trigger main injury to user gadgets.
The malicious apps (the total listing of which may be discovered right here), were discovered to bombard customers with intrusive advertisements, and probably run up enormous cellphone payments, have been downloaded practically eight million instances in complete.
Via Engadget