{"id":313711,"date":"2019-07-18T08:47:38","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T06:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=313711"},"modified":"2019-07-18T08:48:11","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T06:48:11","slug":"google-removes-stalking-apps-from-play-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/313711-google-removes-stalking-apps-from-play-store.html","title":{"rendered":"Google removes stalking apps from Play Store"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google has pulled seven Android apps from its Play Store after <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.avast.com\/avast-identifies-stalker-apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>researchers at Avast<\/strong><\/a> identified that they were designed to enable stalking.<\/p>\n<p>The apps were likely designed by a Russian developer to allow people to stalk employees, romantic partners, or kids, Avast said.<\/p>\n<p>The apps were installed a combined 130,000 times, with the most-installed apps being Spy Tracker and SMS Tracker, each of which had more than 50,000 installs.<\/p>\n<p>Users could install these apps on the target device, entering their email address and password, after which it sends details on the phone owner&#8217;s activity to the snoop&#8217;s email address.<\/p>\n<p>Avast said these apps are able to track the surveilled person\u2019s location, collect their contacts, SMS, and call history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese apps are highly unethical and problematic for people\u2019s privacy and shouldn\u2019t be on the Google Play Store,\u201d said Avast head of mobile threat intelligence and security Nikolaos Chrysaidos.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey promote criminal behaviour, and can be abused by employers, stalkers or abusive partners to spy on their victims.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/313477-2019-cyber-security-conference-registrations-open.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">2019 Cyber Security Conference registrations open<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google has pulled seven Android apps from its Play Store after researchers at Avast identified that they were designed to enable stalking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":268775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[52915,9557,58428],"class_list":["post-313711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-avast","tag-google-play-store","tag-stalkerware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}