Security threats are the order of the day, and the privacy of users increasingly violated "thanks" to giants like Facebook, which occupies every day also the covers with lawsuits and scandals that are making what was the largest the world's social network is occupying the lowest positions in the popularity charts. Nevertheless the threats go much further, and could be our own smartphones those that will spy on us without having to install other applications.
This is the conclusion reached by Spanish researchers from the Carlos III University along with other institutions such as the University of Berkeley. According to their study, Android phones, which account for over 80% of the global smartphone market, include factory-installed applications that spy on users. and they send the information collected for all kinds of purposes.
Until now we always said that we had to be very careful with what we installed on our smartphone, and the permissions we gave to each of them. They ask us to access our microphone, our camera, our location, the web pages we visit ... But what about the applications that come pre-installed on our smartphone? Those do not ask us for permission, many of them are even invisible, there are icons or configuration menus that we can modify, but there they are, collecting all kinds of information. And it is these applications that this study has focused on.
«Some of those apps They call home asking for instructions and send information on where they are installed. This information is sometimes enormous: extensive reports with technical characteristics of the phone, unique identifiers, location, contacts in the calendar, messages or emails. All that is collected by a server and makes a decision of what to do with that phone. For example, depending on the country you are in, you may decide to install a app or another, or promote some ads or others. We have found out by analyzing the code and behavior of the apps»
The authors of those apps They are one of the great mysteries of Android. Research has found a similar picture to the underworld of the darkweb:there for example apps signed by someone who says it's "Google" and doesn't look like it
The study, which has been echoed by even conventional media such as El País, it's really worrisome for a platform like Android, and it is nothing more than a reflection of the chaos that reigns in an "open" platform where all kinds of intermediaries reach out. (Google, manufacturer, operators, companies ...) until it reaches the end user. The problem is that, as the researchers themselves claim, “exercising regulatory control over all possible versions of Android on the market is almost unmanageable. It would require a very extensive and expensive analysis.
For this and for many other things I do not want Android or paint.