PUBG Mobile, Truecaller and others found snooping on your iPhone clipboard data

These 53 apps discovered by researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk back in March have still not stopped snooping on the iOS device’s clipboards.

Apple iPhone user. (Pixabay)

UPDATE (Statement from Truecaller): "It was recently brought to our attention that iOS 14 highlights that Truecaller is accessing the device clipboard.We wish to clarify that this is by design. Truecaller accesses the clipboard to let you copy a number from a website, email, SMS or your call log and paste into Truecaller to find out who's number it is.We look at the clipboard only on the device (nothing is sent to our servers), and if we don't find a phone number in the clipboard data, we fully discard the clipboard data. If we do find a phone number, we first ask the user if they want to search for this number on Truecaller and only then is a search carried out. Importantly, it's just the phone number that we look at, nothing else. It's also important to note, this is a very valuable feature for our users.

Original: A couple of days ago a popular social media app called TikTok came in the headlines for its suspicious behaviour of snooping on the iPhone's clipboard. While the company is yet to fix this, a couple of researchers have found additional 53 iOS apps that work in a similar fashion.

As reported by Ars Technica, these 53 apps discovered by researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk back in March have still not stopped snooping on the iOS device's clipboards. It is said that these apps peek on the handset's saved clipboard, which can have sensitive data like IDs and passwords, everytime when they are opened or closed.

The list not just includes some shady apps that you haven't heard before but some popular apps as well, some of them being apps that you might be using every day. These are said to share the data found in the clipboard with the other nearby device using the same Apple ID.

Also reported is that, as soon as the list was made live in March, 10% Happier: Meditation and Hotel Tonight promised to remove this behaviour. TikTok promised the same but has not fixed it yet.

Here are the App names and the Bundle IDs.

News:

ABC News — com.abcnews.ABCNews

Al Jazeera English — ajenglishiphone

CBC News — ca.cbc.CBCNews

CBS News — com.H443NM7F8H.CBSNews

CNBC — com.nbcuni.cnbc.cnbcrtipad

Fox News — com.foxnews.foxnews

News Break — com.particlenews.newsbreak

New York Times — com.nytimes.NYTimes

NPR — org.npr.nprnews

ntv Nachrichten — de.n-tv.n-tvmobil

Reuters — com.thomsonreuters.Reuters

Russia Today — com.rt.RTNewsEnglish

Stern Nachrichten — de.grunerundjahr.sternneu

The Economist — com.economist.lamarr

The Huffington Post — com.huffingtonpost.HuffingtonPost

The Wall Street Journal — com.dowjones.WSJ.ipad

Vice News — com.vice.news.VICE-News

 

Games:

8 Ball Pool — com.miniclip.8ballpoolmult

AMAZE!!! — com.amaze.game

Bejeweled — com.ea.ios.bejeweledskies

Block Puzzle —Game.BlockPuzzle

Classic Bejeweled — com.popcap.ios.Bej3

Classic Bejeweled HD —com.popcap.ios.Bej3HD

FlipTheGun — com.playgendary.flipgun

Fruit Ninja — com.halfbrick.FruitNinjaLite

Golfmasters — com.playgendary.sportmasterstwo

Letter Soup — com.candywriter.apollo7

Love Nikki — com.elex.nikki

My Emma — com.crazylabs.myemma

Plants vs. Zombies Heroes — com.ea.ios.pvzheroes

Pooking – Billiards City — com.pool.club.billiards.city

PUBG Mobile — com.tencent.ig

Tomb of the Mask — com.happymagenta.fromcore

Tomb of the Mask: Color — com.happymagenta.totm2

Total Party Kill — com.adventureislands.totalpartykill

Watermarbling — com.hydro.dipping

 

Social Networking:

TikTok — com.zhiliaoapp.musically

ToTalk — totalk.gofeiyu.com

Tok — com.SimpleDate.Tok

Truecaller — com.truesoftware.TrueCallerOther

Viber — com.viber

Weibo — com.sina.weibo

Zoosk — com.zoosk.Zoosk

 

Other:

10% Happier: Meditation — com.changecollective.tenpercenthappier

5-0 Radio Police Scanner — com.smartestapple.50radiofree

Accuweather — com.yourcompany.TestWithCustomTabs

AliExpress Shopping App — com.alibaba.iAliexpress

Bed Bath & Beyond — com.digby.bedbathbeyond

Dazn — com.dazn.theApp

Hotels.com — com.hotels.HotelsNearMe

Hotel Tonight — com.hoteltonight.prod

Overstock — com.overstock.app

Pigment – Adult Coloring Book — com.pixite.pigment

Recolor Coloring Book to Color — com.sumoing.ReColor

Sky Ticket — de.sky.skyonline

The Weather Network — com.theweathernetwork.weathereyeiphone