Arkansas AG Lawsuit Claims Temu Shopping App Is ‘Dangerous Malware’

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin leveled sweeping accusations against e-commerce app Temu in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, accusing the company of violating the state’s law against deceptive business practices.

“Temu claims to be an online shopping platform, but it is dangerous malware, surreptitiously granting itself access to virtually all of the data on a user’s cell phone,” says Griffin.

“Temu’s behavior came to light after the Pinduoduo app was removed from Google’s Play Store due to the presence of malware that exploited vulnerabilities in the operating systems of users’ phones and allowed the app to not only “to access virtually all data stored on phones undetected, but also to recompile itself and potentially modify its properties once installed, in ways designed to avoid detection,” the lawsuit claims, highlighting concerns. ‘Apple regarding Temu’s compliance with data security transparency standards Apple said. Policy Last year, the app was available on its App Store after fixing the issues.

The lawsuit alleges that Temu’s app could be even more dangerous than Pinduoduo’s. He cites an article from Grizzly Research, a company “focused on producing differentiated research insights on publicly traded companies through extensive due diligence.” The lawsuit cites the report’s findings that “the Temu app has the ability to hack users’ phones and bypass data privacy settings that users have deliberately set to prevent access to their data.”

The AG claims that Temu collects far more data than necessary to run a shopping app, including sensitive or personally identifiable information. For example, the suit alleges that Temu misleads users in its requests for access to information, such as location, when uploading a photo. “A reasonable consumer would assume that location permission is limited to the use of photo uploading. The permission, however, extends each time the user interacts with the Temu app,” the suit claims. It also alleges that Temu “hijacks” access permissions to audio and visual recording and storage on a device.

Temu, Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.