Be concerned about Clean Master's data collection and privacy practices
Hey everyone,
I came across this report by a respected professor and it gave me huge concern because I've used Clean Master in the past. Apparently despite Clean Master's popularity, the app's origin and purpose seem to have been overlooked. I deleted the app right away but I thought I should share what I read with other users.
The report (written by a Carnegie Mellon professor and published in Vocativ and Gizmodo) stirred up widespread concern, identifying apps that mysteriously “know everything about you.” If you dig deeper into the report, you'll see that the company with the most of these privacy-invading apps on the list is Cheetah Mobile. These include CM Security, Clean Master, and Battery Doctor.
CM Security-AppLock & AntiVirus flags for 29 privacy permissions, some of which include call logs, text messages, and contact lists to name a few. And where the data is used thereafter is unknown to anyone else but Cheetah, leaving its users open to privacy vulnerabilities.
“That a security app is the most data-greedy is both unsurprising and disturbing. Is it really necessary to impinge on privacy to ensure security,” Gizmodo noted in its analysis.
With Cheetah Mobile’s aggressive mobile advertising foray as the public company advances its investors’ interests, it’s evident that private information from users of Clean Master, CM Security, and Battery Doctor are fed into its advertising system to deliver ads to Cheetah Mobile users and then monetize their data at the expense of its users’ privacy as suggested by Gizmodo.
Hey everyone,
I came across this report by a respected professor and it gave me huge concern because I've used Clean Master in the past. Apparently despite Clean Master's popularity, the app's origin and purpose seem to have been overlooked. I deleted the app right away but I thought I should share what I read with other users.
The report (written by a Carnegie Mellon professor and published in Vocativ and Gizmodo) stirred up widespread concern, identifying apps that mysteriously “know everything about you.” If you dig deeper into the report, you'll see that the company with the most of these privacy-invading apps on the list is Cheetah Mobile. These include CM Security, Clean Master, and Battery Doctor.
CM Security-AppLock & AntiVirus flags for 29 privacy permissions, some of which include call logs, text messages, and contact lists to name a few. And where the data is used thereafter is unknown to anyone else but Cheetah, leaving its users open to privacy vulnerabilities.
“That a security app is the most data-greedy is both unsurprising and disturbing. Is it really necessary to impinge on privacy to ensure security,” Gizmodo noted in its analysis.
With Cheetah Mobile’s aggressive mobile advertising foray as the public company advances its investors’ interests, it’s evident that private information from users of Clean Master, CM Security, and Battery Doctor are fed into its advertising system to deliver ads to Cheetah Mobile users and then monetize their data at the expense of its users’ privacy as suggested by Gizmodo.
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