Posted by Pooja Patel.
The Federal Trade Commission charged a technology company, Vulcun, for installation issues with the game,“Running Fred,” and for unfairly taking-over consumers phones and installing apps on their phones without their permission. “Running Fred” is a Google Chrome application that runs on Android phones. This game has become quite popular, and is used by more than 200,000 consumers.
The two founders of Vulcun, Ali Moiz and Murtaza Hussein, purchased the game. They replaced the name of that app to “Weekly Android Apps” and made several changes. Through the changes, the two founders were able to attack consumers with ads. The FTC states that ““Because the Weekly Android Apps hid and accepted the default Android permissions request, these mobile apps could have gained immediate access to the user’s address book, photos, location, and persistent device identifiers. In addition, once installed, the apps could have gained access to other information, including financial and health information, by executing additional malicious code on the consumer’s mobile device.” Because of this, many people complained about not having privacy on their phone, and also “that the browser extension was opening multiple tabs and windows on their browser advertising various apps.” The company’s actions seems to be an invasion of privacy.
Vulcun finally agreed to stop these unfair acts. Now, the company is required to tell consumers about the types of information their products will accessed, how it will be used, and display any built-in permission notices associated with the installation of the app advertisement service. Vulcun also has no rights to hide from consumers whether their product have been endorsed by third parties.
Pooja is an accounting and finance major at the Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University, Class of 2019.