From teenagers to adults, everyone knows about those apps, which are used to create a flawless picture for Instagram or Facebook platforms. But, maybe you will not be able to download or use those apps anymore, as the tech giant Google has deleted 29 malicious "beauty camera" apps due to serious concerns.
The technology company, headquartered in California took the decision because they came to know that these android apps were sharing pornographic contents and forwarding users to phishing websites to steal personal information.
A cybersecurity firm Trend Micro said in a report that some of these deleted apps have been downloaded millions of times and most of the downloaded counts originated in Asia, particularly in India. Now, these apps are no more available in Google Play Store.
Trend Micro, headquartered in Japan, said, "A user downloading one of these apps will not immediately suspect that there is anything amiss until they decide to delete the app."
The IT security company said that when a user unlocks the device, such apps will push several full-screen ads, which includes fraudulent content and pornography that will pop up via android user's browser. In addition, the company mentioned in the report that during their analysis, "we found a paid online pornography player that was downloaded when clicking the pop-up."
As per the analysis, done by Trend Micro, none of these malicious apps gave any indication that they were the providers of such ads, thus users might find it difficult to determine where they're coming from.
This is not it, as the company added in the report that some of these apps redirected to phishing websites that asked the user to provide personal information, such as addresses and phone numbers.
Trend Micro said, "For example, the package com.beauty.camera.project.cloud will create a shortcut after being launched. However, it will hide its icon from the application list, making it more difficult for users to uninstall the app since they will be unable to drag and delete it," and further added that the camera apps used packers to safeguard them from being analysed.
