Google has removed three questionable apps from the Play Store. These namely Princess Salon, Number Coloring, and Cats and Cosplay are all children’s apps and had over 20 million downloads between them. According to Google, the applications were violating the company’s data collection policies and were removed from the store after the International Digital Accountability Council (IDAC) brought the violations to its notice.
Researchers at IDAC – a non-profit based out of Boston found that the apps weren’t actually violating any rules but it was the SDKs that these apps were using where the problem lay. The SDKs – Unity, Umeng, and Appodeal – used in these apps were violating data collection practices.
Google took corrective response of removing the apps from the Play Store, after its own investigation. Reportedly, the three apps were based on a faulty framework, which was found to have improper data collection practices. It was found that certain versions of the Unity, Appodeal, and Umeng SDKs were collecting user’s Android ID and AAID (Android Advertising ID) numbers – a practice that is not in compliance with Google Play Store policies around data collection.
Collecting these unique Android identifiers simultaneously means the privacy controls are being bypassed to “track users over time and across devices”, which is not permissible in Google policy. While neither IDAC nor Google have shared any details on how much data may have been compromised, this news has again got us wondering how safe these apps and wearables are for kids.
