Reasons Why You Should Not Install Flash Keyboard On Your Android Phone
Android users are surrounded with several
apps to download from both google playstore
and other sources. There are millions of
applications for almost every category of
human beings. There are apps with different
tasks and functions and one of the popular
apps are keyboard apps as we need them for
typing.
Flash Keyboard is among the most popular
applications in Google playstore as it has
recorded over 50 million downloads and was
sometime ranked as the 11th most popular
app on playstore but unknowingly to users,
the app is full of malware and not safe for
users.
This was recently discovered by a UK-
based cyber-security firm by name Pentest.
They found the keyboard to be asking for
“excessive permissions”, displaying infected
ads, asking for admin privileges in order to
make uninstall very difficult, monitoring user
behavior, and then sending data to servers in
China without the user’s consent.
Reasons Why Flash Keyboard App Is A Malware
According to Pentest
1. The app requires unwanted access to a
phone’s Bluetooth connection, geo-location
feature, or Wi-Fi status which is not ideal for
a keyboard app.
2. The app always ask for access to kill
background processes, read SMS messages,
show system overlays, or remove download
notifications. Pentest says there are no
reasons for a keyboard app to require these
intrusive permissions.
3. Flash Keyboard was asking for device
admin permissions, and was using these
powers to take over the smartphone’s lock
screen and show ads even if users opted out.
4. Flash Keyboard secretly transfers data to
secret servers located in China and other
foreign countries. The app transmitted
sensitive user data including the owner’s
email address, device manufacturer, model
number, IMEI and Android version to what it
believes to be analytics servers in the US,
Netherlands and China.
5. Flash Keyboard sends details of the
currently connected Wi-Fi network and others
in the proximity, the identity of the mobile
network being used and GPS coordinates that
are accurate to within three meters of the
user.
So you have seen it. If you noticed, the
owners of the app are always running ads on
Facebook and Google adword to promote it
but seeing what is on ground now, i think
you should think twice before downloading
the app.
Of course there are other nice and
amazing android keyboard you should try.
For
instance SwiftKey, Google keyboard and
Gokeyboard are all nice.
Please hit the SHARE BUTTONs to share this
with your friends so that they will be aware
of this malware pending the time the app
developers fixes it. Thank you.
apps to download from both google playstore
and other sources. There are millions of
applications for almost every category of
human beings. There are apps with different
tasks and functions and one of the popular
apps are keyboard apps as we need them for
typing.
Flash Keyboard is among the most popular
applications in Google playstore as it has
recorded over 50 million downloads and was
sometime ranked as the 11th most popular
app on playstore but unknowingly to users,
the app is full of malware and not safe for
users.
This was recently discovered by a UK-
based cyber-security firm by name Pentest.
They found the keyboard to be asking for
“excessive permissions”, displaying infected
ads, asking for admin privileges in order to
make uninstall very difficult, monitoring user
behavior, and then sending data to servers in
China without the user’s consent.
Reasons Why Flash Keyboard App Is A Malware
According to Pentest
1. The app requires unwanted access to a
phone’s Bluetooth connection, geo-location
feature, or Wi-Fi status which is not ideal for
a keyboard app.
2. The app always ask for access to kill
background processes, read SMS messages,
show system overlays, or remove download
notifications. Pentest says there are no
reasons for a keyboard app to require these
intrusive permissions.
3. Flash Keyboard was asking for device
admin permissions, and was using these
powers to take over the smartphone’s lock
screen and show ads even if users opted out.
4. Flash Keyboard secretly transfers data to
secret servers located in China and other
foreign countries. The app transmitted
sensitive user data including the owner’s
email address, device manufacturer, model
number, IMEI and Android version to what it
believes to be analytics servers in the US,
Netherlands and China.
5. Flash Keyboard sends details of the
currently connected Wi-Fi network and others
in the proximity, the identity of the mobile
network being used and GPS coordinates that
are accurate to within three meters of the
user.
So you have seen it. If you noticed, the
owners of the app are always running ads on
Facebook and Google adword to promote it
but seeing what is on ground now, i think
you should think twice before downloading
the app.
Of course there are other nice and
amazing android keyboard you should try.
For
instance SwiftKey, Google keyboard and
Gokeyboard are all nice.
Please hit the SHARE BUTTONs to share this
with your friends so that they will be aware
of this malware pending the time the app
developers fixes it. Thank you.
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