Hidden Malware and Privacy Risks with the Top Free Android VPN apps in the Google Play Store

Many of the VPN apps in the google play store failed to protect the user privacy, potentially malicious and spy on users secure transactions.

According to Simon Migliano Head of Research, over 25% of apps failed to protect the user privacy and 85% apps contains suspicious permissoopns that spy on users.

Top10VPN’s extensive research published rist index findings to avoid customers using flawed apps that compromise the user privacy and security.

Risk Index tested over 150 Free Android VPN apps that has more than 260M installs for effective encryption, browser leaks, viruses and malware, dangerous app functions, behaviors and suspicious permissions.

66% of apps asking users to grant intrusive permissions, 25% ask users to give tracking permissions and 38% of apps asking permission to access personal info.

The permissions includes accessing user’s camera, recoding through Microphone without user consent, accessing contacts and sending SMS secretly.

According to the team analysis report, 63% of all apps abuses users privacy, 18% of apps reported positives of malware scan and 38% apps has major abnormality.The detailed report states that all the VPN indexed by Risk Index were encryption the traffic.

A number of intrusive permissions were detected in 150 apps that indexed the write external storage, Bluetooth, read contacts, camera, send sms, record audio, read calendar anad activity recognization.

VPN is basically a private network through which you can connect to the Internet. It makes your web traffic pass through encrypted connections to servers which are under the control of providers.

One of the most important reasons to install your own VPN is to be sure that your provider is not selling your browsing history to others. This is permissible under law and you cannot be sure of the integrity of all providers.

Alex Brammer told Gbhackers that, we identified the top 150 free VPN apps on the Google Play store and downloaded the binaries for analysis. The binaries were scanned using the VirusTotal tool, the resulting reports for each app identified the following: matches against major databases for known malware and viruses; app permissions; and dangerous functions and behavior.

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