Meitu, the Chinese application that has gone viral can be dangerous

Question

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Meitu, the Chinese application that has gone viral can be dangerous

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Answer 1

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Today we are going to kill two birds with one stone, on the one hand we are going to present you Meitu , a very interesting Chinese application for the edition of selfies and at the same time we will inform you about the controversy that has uncovered this application.

Meitu is presented as an application for selfies , but in addition to the already known filters includes a section called Beautify , with which you can remove skin imperfections (acne, spots, wrinkles, etc.) and we can even increase the size of the eyes

But the option that most liked this app and that has made it possible to go viral is called Hand-drawn . This option is able to process a photograph and turn it into an irresistible sleeve to which it adds a special shine in the eyes.

Meitu, the Chinese application that has gone viral can be dangerous.

And when the Meitu application had its way to success practically ready, the news leaps from the hand of malware expert @FourOctets announcing that the permissions behind the application are excessive and can compromise our privacy and security.

Among the permits that Meitu requests during the installation process and which could be considered dangerous are: access to SMS, sending of calls, GPS location and IMEI of the terminal .

It is not new that this controversy leaps out in Chinese applications that gather more information than necessary, but the explanation is in Chinese laws. Each country has its own laws and China was not going to be less, for that reason a recent Chinese law forces developers to make sure that it is capable of identifying each and every one of its users .

The great uncertainty lies in what is done with the collected data. We know that behind this there is a law that requires them to collect this data, but we also know that they may be selling our personal information to third parties. My recommendation is to dispense with Chinese applications whenever we can.

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