Watch out for Flashlight apps, you’re being watched!

Flashlight apps are very popular in Play Store. Generally, to simulate the effect of a flashlight, they leave the LED near the photo sensor, which normally acts as a flash. An ingenious principle that also attracts unscrupulous publishers who take advantage of it to spy on you without your knowledge! How do you protect yourself?

We owe the investigation to the Snoopwall website. Of the 10 apps that allow flashlight functionality, they all ask for permissions which is surprising to say the least even downright dangerous. For a simple application that should light up in front of you, we find requests for authorization of the phone number, geolocation and even access to the device’s text messages. History does not go by without reminding us of the situation in Russia, which, thanks to flaws in Windows, was able to spy on France.

These are clearly abusive authorizations and have one purpose here: collect as much user information as possible after the smartphone… to send the collected data to hard-to-identify sites. Thus, SnoopWall explains, it can track these shipments to India, China and Russia. Unfortunately the track ends here and it is impossible to learn more for now.

The challenge is strategic for the smart guys hiding behind the development of such software. Everyone needs a flashlight, and the fact that it’s free makes these apps extremely attractive for users who don’t take the time to read the required permissions. As the survey points out, all permissions are listed on the screen before installation.

Let’s add that in this case it is still possible to reject the application in question and therefore to reject it. Because what’s pretty worrying is that all apps in the run are still all online in Play Store at this time (we will not share links with you for security reasons). If you own one of these games (click on the image to enlarge), we recommend removing it as soon as possible.

To counter this trend, which is impacting highly rated products on the Google store, Snoopwall has developed its own app, Privacy Flashlight, which is certified cookie-free. It weighs 72Kb and requires only two permissions to install. Do meditation. And we can never repeat enough be careful what you upload on your smartphones!

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