A new Trojan has been found, and removed, from the Google Play/Android Market, McAfee reported on Friday afternoon.

The Trojan hid itself in applications that promised trailers of upcoming Japanese-language video games, or those that offered scenes from anime or adult Japanese videos, McAfee reported on its blog.

McAfee Mobile Security detects these threats as Android/DougaLeaker.A, the company said.

McAfee said that the fifteen malicious applications of this sort had been found on Google Play, and that all had been removed from the market. However, McAfee employee Carlos Castillo reported that users should beware applications like these that promise to display video content, then ask for permissions they shouldn't otherwise need - in this case, "read contact data" and "read phone state and identity".

In this case, the app gathers the Android ID - not the IMEI code that can uniquely identify the device, but the 64-bit number that is randomly generated on the device's first boot and remains with it for the life of the device.

PC Mag has the details HERE!

Truly, you need to pay attention.

Google has gotten better about pulling apps from the Play Store that are demonstrably harmful to your phone. That doesn’t mean, however, that such an app can’t find many hapless victims before it is killed. If you’re going to explore the Play Store in search of the next big app, you need to go in with a healthy dose of skepticism. The shady characters looking to take advantage of users are getting better at projecting a facade of legitimacy all the time. With a little prepping, and just a few seconds, you can make sure you avoid scams.

Read what you can do.

A new bill drafted in the House of Representatives would give the Federal Trade Commission power to regulate "monitoring software" that transmits personal information such as location data. This bill seems to have been drafted at least partially in response to Carrier IQ, which sparked privacy debates when it was discovered on multiple carrier's phones last fall.

The drafted bill is called the Mobile Device Privacy Act, or MDPA, and was introduced Monday by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). As you might recall, Markey is the same Congressman who expressed interest in investigating Carrier IQ in December 2011. The MDPA bill, which is a discussion draft and has not yet been introduced as a formal bill, can be viewed in PDF format here.

Read the rest of the story HERE!

There's been a lot of paranoia and FUD surrounding a small, IDC-award winning software company called Carrier IQ, ever since a young security researcher named Trevor Eckhart posted video footage showing how some popular phones use Carrier IQ to collect data on your phone.

Officially, as our sister site Geek.com noted in an excellent explainer piece, Carrier IQ makes software that lets customers track when, where, and how you're using your cell phone, all for the purpose of troubleshooting. As Carrier IQ vice president of marketing, Andrew Coward, told me a couple weeks ago, this diagnostic information makes troubleshooting calls go by a lot faster. The activity log sent from Carrier IQ to your cell phone company is pulled every time you call your operator to report a problem, like dropped calls or random outages.

Sounds innocent enough, but the lack of transparency over this firmware has infuriated many owners, so as requested by many readers, we've shown you how to detect and remove Carrier IQ from your device. But before you do, you should know how it will really affect your cell phone service.

Read the rest of the story HERE!