Not-so-dear subscribers

[harlan4096]

Many people have had a run-in with subscriptions to mobile content providers. They appear out of the blue, and get discovered only when account funds run dry. It might seem that the obvious solution is not to visit dubious sites and not to install apps from third-party sources. But, alas, these days such advice is clearly not enough. We recently discovered several apps in Play Market directly related to such intrusive services.

On the face of it, they are ordinary photo editors, but suspicions start to creep in on perusing the list of permissions. For example, the apps request access to Wi-Fi controls, which is rather unusual for this type of software. What’s more, when run, the editors request access to notifications — and keep doing it till the user says “yes.” Next, while the user is trying to embellish a photo (using the meager functionality), the app collects information in the background about the device and sends it to the server ps.okyesmobi[.]com.

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