Verizon’s bloatware is not only annoying but also potentiality dangerous. Verizon has apps loaded on your phone that you cannot uninstall without breaking warranty. This can be annoying because apps that you never use could be running in the background constantly draining your battery for no reason. Also you have to constantly update these apps to keep them from becoming vulnerable to attack.
Here is where it gets worse. Some of these apps like Tune Wiki and Slacker radio contain ads. These ad have the potential to leak location info and collect device or mobile info. I found this because of Lookout Mobile’s Ad Network Detector. After running a scan you can see that many apps contain potentially dangerous ads inside them. Here is an example of what I found on my HTC Thunderbolt from Verizon Wireless.
TuneWiki contains
- Cauly
- Admob
- MoPub
- Millennial
Slacker Radio
- Admob
- Millennial
Having the app itself might not be so dangerous unless it gets hacked because they will be held accountable due to privacy agreements. The advertisements inside them how ever could leak the data with less worry because they do not have to follow the same rules as the app.
You can scan your own phone as well with Lookout’s Ad Network Detector. It is a free app available in Google’s Play Store and is very easy to use. The steps include going to the Play Store downloading the app, then pressing ” Start Scan”. It will begin analyzing your apps, depending on how many you have this could take a minute or two. The Ad Network Detector then organizes the networks into categories of what the ad network does. You can then click on an arrow with a number next to it. The number indicates how many different ad networks you have of that type of category. You can click on each ad then and see what app(s) they are running in. On this screen you can see a more detailed description of what the app is capable of.