Google: Two Android apps with millions of downloads secretly shared user data with China

Spyware apps are a widespread issue, and despite Google’s efforts to remove them from the Play Store, they still exist and pose significant risks. According to a report by security research firm Pradeo, two apps with nearly 1.5 million downloads were found to be sending user data to China.

In a blog post, Pradeo revealed that both applications, “File Recovery & Data Recovery” and “File Manager,” were developed by the same individual and disguised as file management apps. These apps exhibited similar malicious behaviors.

Pradeo explains that these apps were programmed to operate silently in the background, secretly extracting sensitive user data and sending it to malicious servers located in China. Despite their claims to the contrary, these apps were indeed collecting user data.

The data collected by these apps included users’ contacts, pictures, audio and video files, network provider information, OS version, device brand and model, and country code, among other details.

Pradeo has informed Google about these malicious apps, but they are still available on the Play Store. Users are advised to uninstall them if they have installed these apps. However, Pradeo notes that they are not easily removable and require users to access the application list in their device settings to delete them.

Pradeo also provides three security tips for downloading apps:

• Do not download applications without any user reviews.
• Read reviews to gain insights into the true nature of the applications.
• Always carefully review and consider the permissions requested by the app before accepting them.

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