According to Computerworld, between one and four million users of Android phones have downloaded wallpaper apps that take personal data from the phone and transmit it to a Chinese-owned server.
Over 80 wallpaper apps created by a pair of developers — “callmejack” and “IceskYsl@1sters!” — include code that accesses users’ personal data, said Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer and a co-founder of Lookout, a San Francisco-based mobile security company.
A large number of free wallpaper apps in the Android Market scrape the phone number; the user-specific subscriber identifier, also know as the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity); the phone’s SIM card’s serial number; and the currently-entered voicemail number from the phone.
That information is then transmitted to a server that Internet records show is registered to a resident of Shenzhen, a city in China’s Guangdong province, just north of Hong Kong.
Source: [Computerworld]
