More than one percent of titles available in Google’s official Android app market may be unauthorized copycats of competing apps that have been re-engineered to more aggressively monitor browsing history and other personal habits, security researchers said on Monday. The study, published Monday by researchers from antivirus provider Bitdefender, analyzed 420,646 Android apps available in Google Play. Of those, 5,077 contained code lifted from Facebook, Twitter, and other legitimate apps. The copycat apps offered the same functionality as the original apps, but they were redesigned to include aggressive advertising libraries (often referred to as SDKs), “beacons” that can be used to track users, and modified permissions that had access to text messages, call histories, and other personal information.
