If you are using “beauty camera” apps, then you should be worried

Google announced that it has deleted as many as 29 malicious “beauty camera” apps that were involved in sharing pornographic content and forwarding users, mostly in India, to phishing websites to steal their personal information.

According to a report published by Trend Micro, a US-based cyber security firm, some of these ‘beauty camera’ apps for Android devices have been downloaded millions of times. The report further claims that a large number of download counts originated from Asia—particularly in India.

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All of the apps have now been removed from the Google’s Play Store.

Trend Micro mentioned in the report that a user downloading one of these apps will not immediately suspect that there is anything wrong with this app, until they decide to remove that particular app from its device.

When users unblock their device, the installed app will push several full screen ads, including malicious ads that will pop up via the browser of the device.

“During our analysis, we found a paid online pornography player that was downloaded when clicking the pop up,” it added.

It was very difficult to find out that who was behind the ads as none of these apps gave any indication, therefore the users might find it difficult to know that where these ads are coming from. Some of these apps redirected to phishing websites that asked the visitor for its personal information, such as the phone numbers and addresses, the report further added.