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Youtuber MKBHD’s app leaking pricy wallpapers for free

“F***YourWallpapers” – internet users are scraping Marques Brownlee’s infamous Panels app, which is not only wildly expensive but also wildly unsafe.

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Screenshot from Youtube

Paulina Okunytė
Paulina Okunytė Senior Journalist
September 26, 2024 1 min read

“F***YourWallpapers” – internet users are scraping Marques Brownlee’s infamous Panels app, which is not only wildly expensive but also wildly unsafe.

Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD on YouTube, has gained nearly 20 million subscribers for his edgy reviews of tech products and trends.

But now, the popular YouTuber finds himself in hot water after launching Panels, his new wallpaper app, which has sparked a wave of backlash from his fanbase.

The Panels app is supposed to provide access to a curated collection of "stunning, full-resolution wallpapers" created by digital artists. On September 24th, he was bragging about it on his X. “I'm so pumped to be launching this app!” he wrote.

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However, the app has turned into more of a reputational suicide. It received instant and tremendous backlash, mainly for asking for too many invasive permissions.

iOS users of the Panels app have raised privacy concerns, noting that it requests permission to track activity across other websites and apps, as well as access location data.

On Tuesday, Brownlee addressed the issues with an X post, telling its followers that he is working on fixing too broad data disclosure “as soon as possible.”

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“For transparency, we'd never actually ask for your location, internet history, etc. The data disclosures (that everyone is screenshotting) is likely too broad, and largely driven by what the ad networks suggest,” he wrote.

Another issue that caught users' attention was the app's greedy pricing. The premium version costs $49.99 per year, while free users are left with the option to download low-quality wallpapers and watch unskippable ads.

Wildly insecure

But that’s not the end of the story. Internet users have now found that all the wallpapers available on the app are stored on a public bucket and accessible to anyone.

Other users on X wrote that the Panel app is “very poorly made” and all payments are verified on the client’s side.

A security researcher, nicknamed I_Am_Jakoby on X, discovered that the app’s API is insecure. He created a basic script, naming the scraping function “FuckYourWallpapers,” which automatically collected high-resolution wallpapers and saved them in a folder called “dumbWallpapers.”

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