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Phone apps that filter spam calls for Hong Kong users found to compromise their data: watchdog

  • Consumer Council finds two of five spam call blocker apps, CallApp and Truecaller, uploaded users’ contacts to databases that were accessible by third parties
  • Test showed information such as names, emails and home addresses had been disclosed and made ‘fully accessible to others’ without users’ consent

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The Consumer Council has urged residents to read the terms of service and privacy policies of apps. Photo: Shutterstock
Two popular apps meant to filter out Hong Kong phone users’ spam calls have uploaded their personal information and contacts to online databases and made certain details accessible to third parties without their consent, the city’s consumer watchdog has found.
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Kenneth Chan Kin-nin, vice-chairman of the Consumer Council’s publicity and community relations committee, said on Thursday that a test run between February and April on five widely used spam call blocker apps showed that two of them, CallApp and Truecaller, had disclosed “personal information such as names, email addresses and even home addresses … and [made them] fully accessible to others”.

He urged residents to read the terms of service and privacy policies of such apps to evaluate their trustworthiness, even as he acknowledged that telemarketing or spam calls brought significant annoyance.

Chan explained that CallApp, upon accessing the user’s contact lists, automatically uploaded all contact information to its database, allowing other parties to perform a “reverse lookup” by simply entering a phone number.

These parties could then trace the owner’s name and view their personal information, including their full name in both Chinese and English, email address, social media links and other details.

Kenneth Chan, vice-chairman of the Consumer Council’s publicity and community relations committee, explains the watchdog’s findings. Photo: Eugene Lee
Kenneth Chan, vice-chairman of the Consumer Council’s publicity and community relations committee, explains the watchdog’s findings. Photo: Eugene Lee

“If a user stores the mobile numbers of friends and relatives in their contact list and permits access when using the app, [those contacts’] personal data can be accessed and uploaded by the app even if [the contacts] never downloaded the app or authorised such use,” Chan said, noting that such actions were “close to impossible to guard against”.

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