CNET:
Meitu is a viral sensation. Who wouldn’t want to instantly give themselves or their favorite politicians and celebs a Japanese-anime inspired makeover, and share the hilarious results with the world? That’s why the face-recognizing photo app is currently rocking the charts.
But before you zip on over to the App Store or Google Play to grab your free copy, there’s something you should probably know: Meitu is asking for an awful lot of your data in exchange for the lolz — and the app also seems to contain some rather suspicious code.
I wasn’t going to download it regardless because it creates some truly awful photos but the security implications mean you shouldn’t download/use it either.
Meitu wants your tu, as well.
I’m not downloading it because the effect is fuckin’ creepy.
“According to Zdziarski, the iPhone version of the app is quietly checking to see whether your phone is jailbroken (because that’s not creepy), which cellular carrier you’re using, and is even potentially able to uniquely identify your device using the hardware MAC address of your phone.”
I thought iOS randomized the hardware MAC address now?
NOTE: I recommend against downloading it, too. Thees are just three interesting things Zdziarski discovered. God only knows what else its doing.
How did Apple ever approve this app?
Evidently the approval process isn’t thorough enough.
UPDATE: “Overall, the information collected by this app would appear to be on-par with analytics information collected within most iOS apps which are currently live in the App Store.” Well, that is not encouraging… https://medium.com/@chronic_9612/technical-information-regarding-analytics-collection-in-the-meitu-app-for-ios-7f1a165aeee6#.cidnq45g1