Called “iRecorder – Screen Recorder”, this was vetted and welcomed by Google back in September 2021, gaining its privacy-violating capabilities nearly a year later as part of a seemingly innocuous update.
As these threats go, iRecorder – Screen Recorder was loaded with one of the worst possible types, which allowed the formerly legitimate app to snoop on its users. We’re not just talking text messages or phone conversations but full-blown microphone recordings and files with “specific” extensions, suggesting the app may have been used as part of an espionage campaign.
Google has done its job and now you need to do yours.
Put simply, the app, which was initially designed to offer its users the ability to record video displayed on their phones (with permission), started unlawfully listening to people’s real-world conversations after an August 2022 update and may well continue to do so out in the wild.
If you’re one of the over 50,000 people that have apparently installed the app (and its subsequent update), now would be the ideal time to hit that delete button and perhaps even perform a more thorough check for similar threats using a (trusted) antivirus tool.
While there’s no simple way to keep yourself protected in perpetuity, you should definitely pay close attention to all the permissions required by every single app on your mobile device and, well, continue reading PhoneArena with diligence.
