Watch Out! VidMate Steals Your Money And Trespass Your Privacy!

That’s right, this ex-subsidiary of Alibaba app that has been downloaded more than 500 million times has been detected with suspicious background actions.

VidMate is a popular app that allows users to download videos as files from YouTube, Instagram, Whatsapp as well as other supported platforms. It’s a truly convenient app for users and seemingly a quality app that does what it’s meant to do. Unfortunately, that may have been a bait to mine data from half of a billion users without their permissions.

VidMate display ads you’ve never seen. That’s right. Several ads VidMate shows to their users are actually invisible or happens on the background.

They also take your money. VidMate is a ‘free’ app but behind that, they are actually charging you for paid subscriptions without you realizing it.

VidMate might be the culprit behind your drained battery and nope, that’s not because you are downloading videos. It’s because the app engages in suspicious behaviors of sending data feedback and this could also result in privacy infringement.

Check this out: How VidMate has been taking your money and draining your phone’s battery.

The CEO of Upstream, Guy Krief, consider users who decide to download and use the app as users that “surrender control of their phone and personal information to a third party.” It’s an app that “commit ad fraud, at the expense of its owner … and his privacy.”

Upstream has blocked 128 million users due to suspicious transactions of users from various countries. The total cost sums up to $150 million of unauthorized subscription fee. This happens since 2017 and the number skyrocketed last year.

VidMate spokesperson, Jiaotao Chen firmly expresses his denials of including malicious coding into their app through a Skype interview.

“No only do we not program such practices into our core app, we have a zero-tolerance policy because it is in VidMate’s interest to protect our users against such detrimental practices,” Chen explains.

UCWeb, the company that made VidMate, has sold the app to Guangzhou Nemo Fish Technology Co., in 2018. They no longer are involved in the activities of the app. The company they sold their app to is a startup, but Chen has refused to disclose any name of the executives or shareholders.

Suspiciously, the second spokesperson who essentially repeated what Chen said in emails, uses the same account as someone named Alice Granger. This is the same account that has been spamming promoted content for VidMate.

Apparently, VidMate is not the only one. It is just one among many others that have been revealed to deal with suspicious transactions on users without their consent. Google banned DO Global, a company partly owned by Baidu, last month.

“Android’s open nature allows for the wide distribution of mobile malware,” Krief commented. Several VidMate users have been complaining regarding strange behaviors on their phones where apps are installed and subscriptions are made without them knowing anything.

For now, it seems that the safest thing to do is to uninstall the app and make sure you don’t have unknown subscription and apps installed in your phone.