The recent Despicable Me 2 has driven the popularity of the yellow Minions to a new level. People are rushing to buy these cute little critters from MacDonalds and Toy Stores. Needless to say, a game surrounding Minions is a sure hit among those who love them.

Minion Rush is a mobile game that you can download from PlayStore/AppStore for your Android Phone or iPhone and iPad. Things are a bit different in the Androids world. Search for Minion Rush and you see other apps which may tempt you to download.

We did a search on ‘Minion Rush’ yesterday and saw 3 copies of ‘Minion Rush’! The icons and screenshots look identical. Of course, the official version is developed by Gameloft. That copy should be the one you download.

The version from ‘Gameloft’ is the official one to download. Who is /Wong Chi Keung’?

The details page looks similar as well:

If you look at the permissions required, here are the comparisons:

Microphone access? Social Contact? Camera? These permissions are not required in the original game.

The clone obviously requested for suspicious access. Microphone, location and social contact acccess? Is it a spyware?

Then there are the cheats app that allows you to get unlimited bananas (yes! banana!).

Again suspicious permission asked.

Unlike iOS App Store which requires screening from Apple, PlayStore allows developer to almost upload their app instantaneously. Google relies on the community to flag out apps. But sneaky developers will still be able to sneak in modified app into the store. Before downloading anything, do look at the permission carefully before selecting ‘Accept’.

**Update 19 Jul 2013: We run a search again, but this time, the clone copies are removed. I wonder how many have downloaded the fake copies…