Dangerous downloading apps

Users interact with each other as avatars. There is a Chat Now feature that randomly pairs users with other users and can lead to inappropriate pairings and interactions.

All profiles are public, and there can be bullying and predators trying to get other users to share their phone numbers and to send pictures. Purpose: Houseparty is a video chatting app that's pretty open.

Friends can communicate with each other through live video and texts in chat groups. It has become particularly popular throughout the COVID pandemic as a way for tweens, teens, and adults to stay in touch and hang out while maintaining physical distance.

Why Parents Should Be Worried: There's no screening and the video is live, so there's nothing to keep kids from inappropriate content. Users can send links via chat and even take screenshots.

There's also nothing keeping friends of friends joining groups where they may only know one person. Purpose: Tinder's developers describe the app as "the fun way to connect with new and interesting people around you. Tinder helps people find others in their geographic location and allows users to view each others' photos and start instant messaging once both people have "liked" one another. The geo-location features and anonymous nature of the app put kids at risk for catfishing , sexual harassment, stalking, and worse.

Learn more scary facts about the Tinder app. Purpose: This app allows users to interact in a question-and-answer format — with friends, peers, and anonymous users alike. Some kids have used the app for hurtful cyberbullying that has been linked to suicides , including the death of year-old Rebecca Sedwick of Florida. British schools have sent home letters calling for students to stop using ask. In response to the uproar in the U.

Check out Webwise's Ask. Purpose: Kik is a mobile app that people can use to text with friends at high speed and with more of a "face-to-face feel" than regular texting users' profile pictures appear in a little bubble next to their text, and they can quickly text photos, sketches, or even pre-designed greeting cards to individuals or groups.

Like some other instant messenger apps, Kik allows your teen to connect with others using just a username rather than texting from her phone number. But it begs the question: Should teens be texting with people beyond their phone contacts? Reviews in the App Store and Google Play store reveal that many people use Kik to meet strangers for sexting. The app also been connected with cyberbullying. Rebecca Sedwick, the Florida bullying victim who killed herself, reportedly used Kik and Voxer in addition to ask.

It's no surprise Kik has landed on some parents' "worst apps" lists. Check out bewebsmart. Purpose: This walkie-talkie PTT push-to-talk app allows users to quickly exchange short voice messages. They can have chats going on with multiple people at a time and just have to tap the play button to hear any messages they receive.

Although it largely has an adult following, including some people who use it for their job, it's becoming popular among teens who enjoy its hybrid style of texting and talking.

Why Parents Should Worry: Hurtful messages from cyberbullies can be even more biting when they're spoken and can be played repeatedly.

Purpose: Snapchat is an app that allows users to send photos and videos that disappear after they're received. The filters and special effects allow users to alter pictures. Why Parents Should Worry: Some kids are using the app to send racy pics because they believe the images can't be saved and circulated. But it turns out that Snapchat pics don't completely disappear from a device , and users can take a screenshot before an image vanishes in the app. And while recent studies revealed that "sexting" sending sexual messages and images, usually via text message is not as popular as parents had feared, "disappearing photo" apps like Snapchat might embolden kids to send more explicit photos and texts than they would have before through traditional texting.

Check out connectsafely. Purpose: Vsco is a photo creation app that gives users the tools to shoot, edit and post images to a profile, kind of like Instagram. Why Parents Should Worry: You should know that you have to manually turn on privacy settings and limit location sharing.

There are also in-app purchases for more serious photo editing tools that could cost you some serious money if your kid decides to download them. Why Parents Should Worry: Whisper lets users set up anonymous accounts to make their messages or confessions overlap an image or graphic similar to e-postcards , which other users can then "like," share, or comment on.

While it allows for creative expression, it can also take overly personal content viral. The app also shows a user's location. Read more on how to retain privacy on FourSquare and Facebook Places. Search engine poisoning is the practice of building tainted sites or pages that are designed to rank high in a search on a given topic. Breaking news topics and Facebook are also common search targets for attackers. As Microsoft has become more serious about Windows security over the past few years, would-be attackers have had to find new ways to infect PCs.

Attacking flaws in Adobe Acrobat is one of these newer methods. So-called poisoned PDFs are PDF files that have been crafted in such a manner that they trigger bugs in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat; posted on a hijacked Website, they may let an attacker commandeer your PC and access your files and personal info.

Feeling particularly paranoid? A newer variant takes an otherwise innocent-looking PDF document and inserts malware into it. Adobe Reader may pop up an alert asking if you want to run the malware, but hackers can edit those messages to trick you into opening the file.

How serious is this problem? In , attacks using malicious PDFs made up 49 percent of Web-based attacks, according to security firm Symantec.

Make sure, also, that you update to Adobe Reader 9. Attackers have been known to exploit flaws in video players such as QuickTime Player and use them to attack PCs. Avoid downloading videos at random. Stick to well-known video sites such as YouTube, or to download services like iTunes. Such downloads can happen just about anywhere. Some sites are built to lure people into a drive-by download; but in a common attack method, criminals will hack a Web page, often on an otherwise legitimate site, and insert code that will download malware to your computer.

If You Have to Go There: The first thing to do is to keep your security software up-to-date, and to run regular malware scans. Many security suites can flag suspicious downloads. Fake antivirus programs look and act like the real thing, complete with alert messages. Most fake antivirus software is best described as extortionware: The trial version will nag you until you purchase the fake antivirus software-which usually does nothing to protect your PC.

Once you send the criminals your credit card information, they can reuse it for other purposes, such as buying a high-priced item under your name. You can get infected with a fake antivirus app in any number of ways. For example, in drive-by downloads see the previous item , a malicious payload downloads and installs without the user realizing it or having any time to react.

Try booting into Safe Mode and running a scan using your legitimate antivirus software. This may render behavioral detection which spots malware based on how it acts on your system useless. If all else fails, you may need to call in a professional.

Access to the Internet over wifi, your call information, calls you've made, call history, your device ID? This to me is not a safe alarm clock," Miliefsky said. And there's the weather and flashlight apps that he says exploit legitimate banking apps to capture information, as he showed us in a demonstration of what could happen when someone takes a photo of a check to send to their bank.

Shipped it off to a server somewhere far away," Miliefsky said. Last year the group FireEye discovered 11 malware apps being used on iPhones that gathered users' sensitive information and send it to a remote server, including text messages, Skype calls, contacts and photos Apple fought back by removing the apps and putting stricter security measures in place.

Some apps are simply collecting information for advertising purposes. In , the Federal Trade Commission settled a lawsuit with a company over its popular Brightest Flashlight app, alleging it transmitted consumers' personal information to third parties without telling them. However, the aforementioned ones are among the most widely-used dangerous apps on Android, which is why they have made their way to our list.

So if you have any of the above most dangerous Android apps on your phone, do uninstall it now and download an alternative instead. The list given and comments on other items like uc browser and dolphin browser and others are reported by multiple sites and security firms.

Opera browsers Chinese owned and advertised VPN is really a crappy data mining proxy. So Ms. Getz or Mr. Blaze anything resourceful to add instead of the crap comments you two made?? Have a good day. Such a fraud. Wow, the title says true caller is on here, but then you removed it. I KNOW they didnt change any of their software and far as permissions or what it does, so how much did they pay you, you little weasel?

Journalistic integrity is gone. This right here, is just sad. Uninstall RT which is a Russian mouthpiece and install any other English news channel which is American mouth piece and propaganda machine.