An innocuous-looking torch app for Android that has been downloaded more than 50m times silently shared users' locations and device IDs with advertisers, the company has admitted.
In a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the maker of Brightest Flashlight Free admitted that the app's privacy policy "deceptively failed to disclose" that it was passing on location and device ID data to networks of advertisers.
The privacy policy said that "any" information collected by the app would be used by the company. But it didn't say that it would also send it to third parties.
Since its release in February 2011, the app has been downloaded between 50m and 100m times, according to data on the Google Play app store.
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