“Trend Micro has apologized after several of its consumer macOS anti-malware products and utilities were discovered to be capturing the notebook’s browser history data and sending it to a remote server,” Liam Tung reports for ZDNet.
“Trend Micro apps, which have been removed from the Mac App Store, included Dr Cleaner, Dr Cleaner Pro, Dr. Antivirus, and Dr Unarchiver,” Tung reports. “The apps in question were collecting users browser history and sending files, including user passwords, in a ZIP archive to a remote server.”
Tung reports, “Trend Micro blamed the behavior on the use of common code libraries and has now removed the browser data collection feature and deleted logs store on the AWS servers.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As of this writing, we do not see that Trend Micros’ affected apps have been reinstated in the Mac App Store. Hopefully, Apple’s “review process” will be more stringent than it was the first time around.
Trend Micro’s blog post regarding this situation is here.
SEE ALSO:
More apps in Apple’s Mac App Store caught stealing and uploading browser history – September 10, 2018
More malicious apps that steal user data found in Apple’s Mac App Store – September 7, 2018
No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store, Adware Doctor, steals browser history and sends it to servers in China – September 7, 2018
Hardly a “feature,” more an evil unauthorized Trojan Horse that should be swiftly punished.
One more formerly rather respected company to be given our heart-felt cheers for their sudden entry into the not so exclusive club of rogue app developers!
Your apologies won’t suffice to restore your utterly destroyed image. And we won’t accept them anyway. This kind of illegal data mining is considered a criminal breach of privacy legislation in many countries.
We did away with Trend Micro crap awhile back (PC). Who needs that crap on a Mac anyways?
It’s funny how it’s always the security company 🙂