Android spyware with over 1.5 million downloads sends your data to China

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 174 points – Android spyware with over 1.5 million downloads sends your data to China — delete these apps right now
yahoo.com

Two file management apps on the Google Play Store have been discovered to be spyware that quietly sends user data to servers in China.

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The fishy apps are File Recovery & Data Recovery and File Manager, according to an alert this week from Pradeo, a leading mobile cybersecurity company. The apps, both from the same developer, are programmed to launch without any input from the user and quietly send sensitive user data to servers based in China.

Thank you for posting this, since OP wasn't kind enough to include it in the post description.

OP is a bot account apparently.

I noticed that after my comment. Still a low quality post from a bot seemingly farming for clicks through to articles, where a description summary from a human or better parsing from the bot could have improved the quality of the post.

Agreed, the amount of clicks for the article would increase exponentially if they actually added context for those of us who never click these links.

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You mean Threads?

Yes I know... The cheapest shot.

...Why would Threads send your data to China? They make plenty of money off that data domestically.

This is interesting, I cannot reply to iAmTheTot’s comment, but there’s no issue commenting on any other comments. Is it because they’re on kbin?

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I'm sure it was an honest mistake. Who hasn't tried setting up a println("Hello World") and accidentally forwarded all their keylogger data to the CCP?

my bad, completely forgot to remove that debugging code…

Is it TikTok?

You’d need to make that 1.5 billion to have the article be referring to TikTok.

Edit: but yes the article could easily be about TikTok, they hoard data just like US social medias, but are part owned by the Chinese government, so it’s even worse.

And yet the article doesn't say which File Manager is the spyware or what the dev is called. Great reporting.

The apps are named in the second paragraph my guy. Literally did not have to scroll after clicking the link to prove you wrong.

Even on a quick glance you can find literally 4 apps called "File Manager" and if you scroll further I'm sure there will be even more.

Any electronic device with any software sends any data to anyone who pays.