You’ve probably seen a Meitu selfie in your Instagram or Facebook feed
in the past 24 hours. The app smooths skin, slims down faces, and even
applies a layer of virtual blush and lipgloss, adding a beautifying
effect to your photos. And although the app has been popular in China
for years — Meitu went public in Hong Kong last month — it only recently caught on with American users.
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But security experts quickly pointed out that Meitu, which is free to
download in Google Play and the App Store, requires way more data from
users’ phones than is necessary for a simple photo app.
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It’s normal for a photo app to require permission to access a
phone’s camera and camera roll, so that it can take pictures or edit
ones already on the device. But, as information security researcher Greg
Linares notes,
the Android version of Meitu wants a lot more than that: the app can
access information about what other apps users are running, their
precise locations, their unique device identifier numbers (IMSIs), call
information, carrier information and wifi connections.
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Meitu did not respond to questions about why it requires certain types
of user data, and what it does with the information. Some researchers
noted that Meitu may be required to collect IMSI numbers under Chinese law.
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