11 Android Apps Found Secretly Harvesting Data From Millions of Users
PC Magazine|May 2022
A mysterious company in Panama has been paying Android app developers to incorporate an SDK capable of lifting sensitive data from users’ phones, including copy-paste information.
By Michael Kan
11 Android Apps Found Secretly Harvesting Data From Millions of Users

Security researchers have spotted 11 Android apps collecting sensitive information from user phones, including copy-and-paste data, phone numbers, and email addresses.

The findings come from security firm AppCensus: It examined a software development kit (SDK) running on the Android apps, which together were downloaded over 46 million times on the Google Play Store.

“Whenever a user copy/pastes something, it goes to a shared clipboard, which this SDK was scouring and uploading to its servers,” AppCensus said in a report in April. “What gets put there is arbitrary data, and can include passwords, for example, if a user uses a password manager.”

This story is from the May 2022 edition of PC Magazine.

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This story is from the May 2022 edition of PC Magazine.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.