From Samsung to Google, Android smartphones are some of the most popular handheld devices around the world.
But if you have an Android smartphone, you may want to reassess which apps you have installed on your device.
Experts from VPNPro have warned users about a popular video editing app that contains dangerous spyware.
Worryingly, the app, called VivaVideo, has already been downloaded at least 100 million times on the Google Play Store.
Jan Youngren, a researcher at VPNPro, explained: “This video editing app asks for a wide host of dangerous permissions, including the ability to read and write files to external drives, plus the user’s specific GPS location (which is definitely not needed for a video editing app).”
In total, the researchers found that VivaVideo requests six dangerous permissions, including reading phone state, GPS, video and audio.
The app is developed by QuVideo, which is also behind five other apps with similar dangerous permissions.
Mr Youngren said: “QuVideo also owns the popular Indian app VidStatus, which has more than 50 million installs on Play.
“VidStatus, which is a ‘video status’ tool for WhatsApp, asks for a whopping 9 dangerous permissions, including GPS, the ability to read phone state, read contacts, and even go through a user’s call log.
“The app was also identified as malware by Microsoft, containing a Trojan known as AndroidOS/AndroRat. These kinds of trojans can steal people’s bank, cryptocurrency or PayPal funds.”
Based on the findings, the researchers are urging users to delete the app as soon as possible.
Mr Youngren added: “In general, if users find that these QuVideo apps provide no real benefit, we recommend deleting them from their phones as soon as possible.”
