Google removed these three popular children’s apps from Play Store, know the reason

Google has removed three children’s apps from the Play Store. In fact, these apps have been accused by the International Digital Accountability Council (IDAC) of violating data collection rules. These three apps are Princess Salon, Number Coloring and Cats & Cosplay. These three apps were downloaded by more than 20 million users. However, IDAC said that these apps do not violate any rules in the codes, but glitches have been found in the framework of these apps. These apps use SDKs from Unity, Umeng and Appodeal. The problem has been found in these developer kits.

TechCrunch report has informed that Google has removed the three apps Princess Salon, Number Coloring and Cats & Cosplay from the Play Store only after the IDAC report. “We confirm that the apps referenced in the report have been removed,” a Google spokesperson told the publication. Whenever we find an app that violates our policies, we take immediate action.”

IDAC said that problems have been observed in the data collection practice through the software development kits (SDKs) used in these three apps. The SDKs used in these three apps are Unity, Umeng and Appodeal. It allegedly does not comply with Google Play’s rules on data collection. For example, some versions of the Unity SDK were collecting users’ AAID and Android ID simultaneously. This violates Google’s rules and allows developers to bypass privacy controls and track users.

IDAC has given technical reasons in its blog post for removing these apps.

However, at present no information has been given as to how much data has been leaked by these apps.