Google has pulled dozens of apps used by millions of users after finding that they covertly harvested data..
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Google has pulled dozens of apps used by millions of users after finding that they covertly harvested data,has reported. Researchers found weather apps, highway radar apps, QR scanners, prayer apps and others containing code that could harvest a user's precise location, email, phone numbers and more. It was made by Measurement Systems, a company that's reportedly linked to a Virginia defense contractor that does cyber-intelligence and more for US national-security agencies.
"A database mapping someone’s actual email and phone number to their precise GPS location history is particularly frightening, as it could easily be used to run a service to look up a person’s location history just by knowing their phone number or email, which could be used to target journalists, dissidents, or political rivals," Reardon said in theThough Google has pulled those apps from the Play Store, the researchers noted that they still exist on millions of devices.
The Measurement Systems domain was registered by a company called Volstrom Holdings Inc., which deals with the federal government through a subsidiary called Packet Forensics LLC. A company called Measurement Systems S de R.L."also listed two holding companies as officers, both of which share a Sterling, Va., address with people affiliated with Volstrom," theby email that"the allegations you make about the company’s activities are false.
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