Google Drops 11 Apps for Stealing Users Data; Muslim Prayer Apps Included

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Google in early April reportedly pulled 11 mobile applications from its Google Play Store after the apps had secretly been collecting user data through the use of hidden data-harvesting software. 

A number of the apps dropped by Google that had the software’s codes were Muslim prayer apps, which had been downloaded more than 10 million times according to The Wall Street Journal. 

This finding was first revealed by International security researchers Serge Agelman and University of Calgary’s Joel Reardon. The two men, co-founders of a company called AppCensus, discovered more unusual transmissions and observed that different apps running the same version of the SDK will collect different information, according to the AppCensus blog that went deep into the technical anomalies.

“For instance, the Simple weather & clock widget app running this SDK includes the contents of the clipboard: whenever a user copy/pastes something, it goes to a shared clipboard, which this SDK was scouring and uploading to its servers. What gets put there is arbitrary data, and can include passwords, for example, if a user uses a password manager,” the blog wrote. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Panamanian company that wrote the code, Measurement Systems S. de R.L, is linked through corporate records and web registrations to a Virginia defense contractor that does cyberintelligence, network-defense and intelligence-intercept work for U.S. national-security agencies.

According to AppCensus, the following are 11 apps that they confirmed had codes communicating with the data-harvesting code:

1. Speed Camera Radar 
2. Al-Moazin Lite (Prayer Times)
3. WiFi Mouse(remote control PC) 
4. QR & Barcode Scanner 
5. Qibla Compass – Ramadan 2022
6. Simple weather & clock widget
7. Handcent Next SMS-Text w/ MMS
8. Smart Kit 360
9. Al Quran Mp3 – 50 Reciters & Translation Audio
10. Full Quran MP3 – 50+ Languages & Translation Audio 
11. Audiosdroid Audio Studio DAW – Apps on Google Play

Read: Indonesia With Most Google Content Removal Request; Govt Explains

HARIS SETYAWAN