What can apps do with your information?

[jeca]

I posted the question in the thread with all the tips for malware etc., but I thought I'd post it here as well and hope to get a quicker response.

I installed a photo editing app and deleted it and later on I had some photo albums created (not sure what app did it, but at the time I had Add Watermark installed), so I don't know what's going on. At the time when the app created the albums, I haven't used it for a few days. I deleted it straight after I saw this, but now I'm scared that my phone (and computer/internet can be hacked).

I had other photo editing apps installed previously and I didn't read what they wanted to access when I installed it and now I'm kicking myself for it!

Would a factory reset help in this case? I'm freaked out that someone has my info and what they can do with it!

Some photo editing applications asked for full internet access, I installed them, but deleted within few hours or one to two days. Is this very dangerous and can they hack into my internet/computer?

PicsArt - Photo Studio wanted access to my location and phone calls (and identity?) - what can they do with this? Has anyone used this app and had any bad experiences?

All the apps I installed had ratings of 4+ stars.


What happens when I delete the app? Can my info still be accessed? Can they still use that info to hack into my computer/internet/phone? What do apps do with phone and network info?



Sorry for all the questions, but I'm a newbie and have no clue

 

[alextop30]

First of all - Welcome!!!!

Second lets sort through all of the questions.

1. The apps that you installed are on your phone? (Please answer this question)

For the purposes I will assume you installed them only on your phone. Photo editing apps can do many things and that includes creating sample albums and indexing your photos into albums. This may be because the photos need to be organized a certain way or be converted so that the application can use and edit them.

Just to leave your phone aside for 1 second, I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty that your computer is pretty safe. If you have an antivirus and anti malware program it should have raised all kinds of red flags when you were transferring files. Second if you do not have anti virus and anti malware (depending on your anti virus is the anti malware - kaspensky and many of the paid versions of antivirus software have it included already).

Did you ignore any of these flags? They would have been from your anti virus/anti malware progs.

Next for the phone - could you give the name of the apps that you had installed (if you downloaded them from google play they should be saved under my apps and than all tab) it shows every app that you have ever downloaded from the playstore. It would be nice information to have so we can do some research to make sure that these apps are not any sorts of bad.

If the apps had more than 20 reviews and were 4+ stars you should be fairly safe that they are not apps that would mess around with your phone and or computer.


Extra Information ------

Almost all apps now a days require full internet access so that the developer can collect data which usually consists of a crash log so that they can improve the app. Let me just say that no one has the right to access your phone and get to your personal information no matter what kind of access the app requires. The only exception is in the case of facebook which you can upload your photos online.

Factory wipe will basically wipe absolutely everything on your phone and return it back to a out of the box state. This means that these apps would not have any influence on your system (if you uninstalled them they should not have any influence anyway).

The thing I would suggest is make sure you have latest definitions and updated anti virus and anti malware programs active and download your pics to your computer or a flash drive and do a full scan of the flash drive or the files. This will tell you if there is any threat. Next if you want to sleep absolutely soundly wipe your phone with the factory reset and put your apps and other gadgets on it.

As for your last questions when a legitimate (non malware) app is deleted all files that it created and used should be deleted unless they are used by other programs (kind of like your computer) It is not all the time the case as it can be with photos because albums could have been created which will most likely stay to maintain the integrity of the picture file.

In a malware/virus what ever you want to call it. It uses some sort of an exploit in the system to gain access to system files so it can execute the purpose for which the program is written. For your computer usually trojan horse, backdoor worm and keylogger will create some serious problems and can even go as far as damaging your credit score if you are not careful. It is very similar with your phone where a worm could be deposited which exploits a security hole to run a script which can log your actions and send them to a unauthorized user or simply log your gps location.

Android and your computer are two different systems and it is very rare that any program would be cleaver and well written to exploit numerous holes in different systems (also your computer is much more well protected and every computer now a days comes with some sort of a anti virus so that should pull up all kinds of red flags that something fishy is going on).

Apps that require network info and other privileges simply alert you what they need to function properly. Facebook for example requires full internet and network privileges so that it can push notifications to your phone and tell you when your girl friend made "I love you comment on your wall" :-D As I said most app require network connection so that they can transmit error logs to the developers so that the next version of the app can take care of the most recurring errors which people are experiencing.

If your computer and you have not experienced anything too wonky you should be fine but just to be on the safe side please give the extra information so that I can do some research on the app I think you had one of the app names above I will go and take a look at it and see what it is all about.


hope this information helped you a little

 

[alextop30]

I took a quick look at PicsArt Photo Studio and Watermark and I think that those apps are pretty safe considering that PicsArt was downloaded by 96,000 users and 74,000 gave it 5 stars it is pretty convincing it is a really good app (I am thinking about getting it)

PicsArt requires all of that access to your phone so that it can enable you to share pictures on facebook/sms/flikr/dropbox from the interface of the app.

Watermark just requires read and write access to your pictures so that can display them and add the watermark and save them.

 

[noonehereyet]

Easiest way is to check your logs, or get an app like LBE Privacy Guard and see what your apps are doing... Most importantly ALWAYS know what your installing check the permission of the apps before you install and the size of the app... if its a simple webview app or something of that sort but the app is huge something is wrong way beyond sloppy coding...