Yandex spies on millions of users, sending data to servers in Russia
Information about millions of smartphone users can be found on Russian servers thanks to Yandex spy codes. This was reported by the Financial Times.
Developed by the Russian company Yandex, App Metrica software allows developers to create applications for Apple and Android operating systems. Formally, this software looks like a so-called “software development kit”. But in fact, App Metrica collects information about users and can send it to servers in Russia.
The FT provides such data based on research by Zaha Edwards of the NGO Me2B Alliance.
Yandex itself acknowledges that the software sends information about IP addresses, networks, and devices to servers in Russia and Finland.
According to the Financial Times, more than 2,000 new applications created using the AppMetrica SDK have appeared since the beginning of the Russian aggression. Some of them, according to columnists, seem to be aimed at gathering information about Ukrainian users. As an example, the Financial Times cites the Call Ukraine application to send messages. This application has access to user contacts. At the same time, the developer’s e-mail is a proxy and has the address [email protected].
It will be recalled that Mozilla has removed the ability to use search engines Yandex Search, Mail.ru and OK.ru in its browser. The reason for this was the suspicion of manipulation of search results.
