Wallpaper App Steals Personal Information Downloaded by Millions

Android’s open market place promotes an unrestricted flow of apps between developer and end user. Every once in a while an app makes it’s way onto the Market Place that has less than ethical intentions. Google does take this very seriously and does pull any questionable apps that they deem malicious. Recently, a wallpaper app that includes images from My Little Pony and Star Wars transmitted personal information from the user’s phone to a web site. Google passes on some of the app filtering process on to the Android user asking if we’d like to allow this app to access certain elements of our smart phone. iPhone does not have this end user filtration, they evaluate each app and choose to accept or reject after testing. Both methods have their merrits but we are seeing lately that Android users are not taking the time to properly evaluate the services that an app actually interacts with. A wallpaper app for instance should not need to access your phone services. The specific app in question came from Jackeey Wallpaper, downloaded 1.1 million to 4.6 million times. Security company Lookout, revealed that Jackeey captures your phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification and your voicemail password if it is programmed into your phone. This information was sent to a website, www.imnet.us which is owned in Schenzhen, China. Be careful when installing 3rd party apps, read the services that the app wants to interact with and use good judgement.