My first response was that the ‘Trend Micro’ caught doing this was simply a scam being run by someone else. Surely, this isn’t the sort of company to be involved in the secretive collection of private data including full browser histories? is a public-quoted corporation (KK) headquartered in Tokyo, founded nearly thirty years ago, with almost six thousand employees worldwide, and revenue (2017) of ¥148.8 billion. Unlike another app which stole private data, Adware Doctor, which has also been taken down from the App Store, these three aren’t from a near-anonymous developer, but a multi-national corporation specialising in ‘cybersecurity’. Wifi and Network Scanner, which remain on offer as of 1800 on 10 September 2018. As a result of the hullaballo developing on Twitter and elsewhere, Apple has eventually pulled all the App Store apps by Trend Micro, apart from Dr. Antivirus a detailed listing of all installed apps as well. In careful investigations by security experts including Thomas Reed of Malwarebytes Labs and it was discovered that they exfiltrate browser history, and in the case of Dr. Several of the apps which Apple has recently pulled from the Mac App Store because of their theft of personal data were listed as being developed by Trend Micro.
