En France, the use of personal data on the Internet is a very sensitive subject. So when, in the current international context, there is a link with Russia, the concern goes up a notch. On Android or Apple smartphones, there are no less than 50,000 applications that work thanks to Russian software called AppMetrica. It is software provided free of charge by Yandex (Google’s competitor in Russia) in exchange for user data.Numeramaanalyzed the list of affected applications. In particular, there are 100 very popular applications in France such as BlaBlaCar, Viber, Adidas, Reverso and Akinator.
AppMetrica is a development software that is used by thousands of companies in the French market. Nearly 40% of the applications concerned are mobile games. Companies Easy Brain (which offers sudokus, puzzles and other logic games), Voodoo and Saygame use AppMetrica extensively.
Yandex admits collecting data
Other computer-type applications, such as scanners or photo editing tools, also use this controversial software for the development part.
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Yandex – close to the Kremlin – recognized with the FinancialTimes that its AppMetrica software allowed it, among other things, to have access to the IP address of users, the type of device or the network used. In the context of the war in Ukraine, where the countries that have given their support to President Volodymyr Zelensky fear massive cyberattacks, this information crystallizes concerns even more.
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