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Google Remotely Nukes Apps From Android Phones

Posted by timothy on from the probably-not-ones-you'd-want-to-hang-on-to dept.

itwbennett writes "Google disclosed in a blog post on Thursday that it remotely removed two applications from Android phones that ran contrary to the terms of the Android Market. From the post: 'Recently, we became aware of two free applications built by a security researcher for research purposes. These applications intentionally misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads, but they were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data — or system resources beyond permission.INTERNET. As the applications were practically useless, most users uninstalled the applications shortly after downloading them. After the researcher voluntarily removed these applications from Android Market, we decided, per the Android Market Terms of Service, to exercise our remote application removal feature on the remaining installed copies to complete the cleanup.' The blog post comes a day after security vendor SMobile Systems published a report saying that 20% of Android apps provide access to sensitive information." Update: 06/25 16:44 GMT by S : Clarified last sentence, which incorrectly suggested that 20% of Android apps were malicious. According to the report (PDF, which we discussed recently), "a majority of these applications were developed with the best of intentions and the user data will likely not be compromised.

3 of 509 comments (clear)

  1. Re:oh noes! by Culture20 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Agreed. I still have the original phonesaber app. Apple isn't _this_ evil; this is a blundering destructive evil. Apple is more of a practical, plotting evil.

  2. Re:But what if I liked the application by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Enough with the constructive content, focus on rants and inane bitching, or go somewhere else.

  3. Re:oh noes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Actually, I have read the EULA for all of the software that's installed on my computers. Some of them drone on for pages and pages of legalese, some of them (like the BSD or MIT licenses) are actually easily human-readable.

    I don't re-read the LGPL or the GPL every time I'm presented with it. I don't need to. But I do read each version that comes out to make sure I understand my rights and obligations.

    You must be a hoot at parties.