Remember the free VPN Facebook Onavo, which was removed from the Play Store and App Store after researchers discovered it was spying on users without their knowledge? It seems publisher Sensor Tower isn’t shy about using the same method in around 20 free apps, all of which offer ad-blocking, VPN access, or a combination of the two. In any case, this is revealed by a poll by BuzzFeed journalists.
When enabled, these applications can monitor all traffic and send data to Sensor Tower servers. According to BuzzFeed, these apps required installing a root certificate via a third-party site to hide their activity, bypassing restrictions on the App Store and Google Play Store. The user was never informed about this data collection. Taken together, these 20 apps are extremely popular with over 35 million downloads.
Sensor Tower refuses to collect personally identifiable data or sensitive data such as passwords and usernames: “We take the App Store Rules very seriously and make a concerted effort to comply with them, in addition to changes made to these Rules from time to time.” This story reminds us that even free apps have a business model. Developing them and maintaining their servers costs money, which has to be found somewhere.
In general, free VPN services in particular are one of the best ways to collect personal data as all internet traffic goes through them when activated. Therefore, it is not recommended to use free VPN servers to protect your personal data. Here are 15 of the 20 apps affected by this personal data flush. Core features have since been removed from both app stores:
- Adblock Mobile
- Free & Unlimited VPN
- mobile data
- Ad Blocking Focus
- moon
- Wi-Fi Rocket
- WiFi Booster
- Adblock Mobile 32 bit
- Adblock Mobile
- Wi-Fi Cheetah
- Adblock WuFu
- AdTerminator
- VPN Port
- VPN Proxy
- WiFi Protection
If you have one of these apps and you no longer want to see your personal data being collected, it is highly recommended that you uninstall them.
A list of applications. Currently, only Luna VPN remains in the App Store. Luna, Adblock and Free and Unlimited VPN are still in Play Store. Apple and Google continue to investigate. pic.twitter.com/CQ6jNinA1x
—Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) March 9, 2020
Source : buzz
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