This Popular App Company Was Sold, and Now Its Android Apps Are a Privacy Risk

The internet is no stranger to good apps and services made by independent developers ruined after being acquired by a bigger corporation. The latest example of this phenomenon seems to be the sale of the Simple Mobile Tools suite to ZipoApps, which turned the once-useful Android apps into potential privacy risks.

As the name suggests, Simple Mobile Tools is a group of simple, open-source Android apps without ads or unnecessary permissions. The project includes a file manager, calendar, gallery, contacts, notes, music player, keyboard, SMS messenger, and even its own launcher. If you haven’t come across these apps on the Play Store yet, here are eight more amazing Android apps you won’t find on the Play Store.

According to the Simple Mobile Tools GitHub repository, the suite consisted of 24 apps with over 70 million downloads combined and an average rating of 4.6. It’s safe to say that the project was loved by the open-source community, especially if you look at all the different subreddit posts on r/fossdroid, r/Android, and r/privacy.

Since the project is open source, there’s no fixed team working on the apps, but the lead developer Tibor Kaputa confirmed the sale to ZipoApps in a GitHub discussion. Since then, the apps have been removed from the F-Droid app store (which strongly prefers apps without tracking, adverts, and so on), and have been marked to indicate ad presence on the Google Play Store. Their support email address has also been changed to an @zipoapps.com domain.

Who Are ZipoApps?

ZipoApps is an Israeli company that acquires apps to take them to the “next level.” The company’s business model relies on finding or acquiring well-performing apps and turning them into profitable enterprises via ads or paid subscriptions.

The company has over 50 apps on its Google Play Store page. The ZipoApps site claims that the company works with hundreds of such apps each month, using its “expertise to take them to the next level.” There’s not a lot of information on what exactly the company does with the apps it acquires on its official website.

Why You Should Delete These Apps ASAP

If you’ve been using the Simple Tools Suite, it’s time to move on. Most apps published by ZipoApps collect varying degrees of user data and offer no way of deleting it. There are also allegations that the apps are spyware or adware (Reddit, gHacks, GitHub), which doesn’t bode well for the app suite going forward.

While I didn’t find any concrete evidence to support the claim that ZipoApps turns acquired apps into adware or spyware, the company’s privacy policy does include some shady data collection policies. Even if you visit their one-page official website, they use “tracking technologies” that automatically collect information about you, your online behavior, and the device you’re using.

ZipoApps’ ultimate goal is to monetize the apps it buys. At the most basic level, an app showing ads will collect your data and track you across the internet to ensure the ads are as relevant as possible. That’s just how internet advertising works.

This means that you’ll either have to pay a subscription to use apps that were previously freely accessible or give up your data to continue using said app, except this time, the user interface will be complicated and riddled with ads.

As long as you download apps from the Google Play Store, you should be free of spyware, and there are ways to check for spyware on your Android device. However, the Play Store won’t protect you from ads being spammed on your screen or the allegedly unethical data collection policies.

Thankfully, the r/fossdroid subreddit has already compiled a Simple Mobile Tools alternatives list. And if you really like Simple Mobile Tools, the former developers have forked the project into a new collection called Fossify, where you’ll get the latest versions of the Simple Mobile Tools suite apps you’ve been using so far.