B612, Candy Camera and 28 other popular android camera apps are stealing your data

There is no peace for Android users who are now grappling with malware and continuous threats to the security of their data. A new report from Cybernews has identified thirty camera apps ready to undermine our Android smartphones.

In the first place of this ranking we find an app developed by Meitu, a company that has collaborated with Xiaomi in the creation of the Xiaomi Mi CC9 series, with the BeautyPlus app – Easy Photo Editor & Selfie Camera, installed by over 300 million users. The application would, obviously without consent, collect user data by sending it to its Chinese servers to be resold to the highest bidder.

What’s worse, since beauty Makeup, Selfie Camera Effects, Photo Editor sends pornographic material, redirects web traffic to phishing sites and collects photos taken by users. It is precisely from a cheerful management of permits that the suspicion of illegal activities arises from the 30 applications in question, the list of which is available at the end of the article. The list also includes B612, a beauty & filter camera mostly used by Asians, racking over 500,000,000 downloads globally.

There is an application that requires 40 (forty) Permissions in total, including access to the microphone, GPS position, smartphone status and much more. The GPS position is a permit that is highly sought after by the accused apps, with 13 requiring the accurate position and another 10 obtaining an approximate position anyway.

If 29 applications require access to the camera, one does not even deign to ask for it and prefers to use it at one’s discretion, even without the user’s knowledge. And the same 29 applications ask for reading permission on the device, although they only need the writing permission to save them in the internal memory.

There are over 1.3 billion total installations of the applications reported, so if you have one in your smartphone, do not hesitate to remove it immediately, to prevent your data, and your photos, from ending up in the hands of perfect strangers.

Following the list of 30 apps indicted with the related developer, to facilitate identification and possible removal from your smartphones: