Apple Suspends Hundreds of Apps For Stealing Personal Data From a Million Users

More than 250 iOS apps were establish in rape of Apple ’s App Store privacy insurance , scooping up data from one zillion users estimated to have download the offending apps .

SourceDNA , an analytics serve that uncovered this seedy app behavior , find that the apps were get together email computer address associate with the user ’s Apple ID , plus a list of all the apps users had installed , sequential numbers , and other information that can be used to personally identify and track substance abuser .

According to SourceDNA , Youmi bypassed Apple ’s app review operation by testing what apps could filch by , then used the same mystification technique to bespeak user data . SourceDNA found that while Apple was lock down on secret APIs to forbid apps from getting the chopine serial identification number in iOS 8 , Youmi worked around it number peripheral devices , like the battery scheme , then sent the successive numbers as a ironware identifier .

Starship Test 9

Apple has since patched its favorable reception process to prevent future apps using a like proficiency from getting into the App Store . The company free a financial statement confirming the SourceDNA findings , say that they are “ work closely with developer to help them get update versions of their apps that are safe for client . ” Here ’s the intact statement :

We ’ve identified a group of apps that are using a third - political party advertising SDK , rise by Youmi , a mobile advertising provider , that uses private APIs to gather secret information , such as user email address and machine identifiers , and route data to its company server . This is a violation of our certificate and privacy guideline . The apps using Youmi ’s SDK have been removed from the App Store and any young apps pass on to the App Store using this SDK will be rejected . We are work closely with developer to help them get updated versions of their apps that are safe for customers and in submission with our guidelines back in the App Store quickly .

One would hope Apple should ’ve been screening for this sort of affair . TheSourceDNA blog postdoesn’t list the offending apps by name , but in camera provided a leaning to Apple , so it ’s on them to ensure the app review process catch these third - political party company vying for our info .

Lilo And Stitch 2025