The PlaceRaider is one interesting app developed by the Naval Warfare Surface Center in Crane, Indiana. The app runs in the background of your smartphone and reveals the private information without the user knowing.

The Naval Warfare Surface Center in Crane, Indiana today revealed Smartphone app that puts the capability of modern smartphones to observe areas in sharp relief and shows the power of malware to tap into those capabilities.

The app is capable of running in the background of any smartphone running Android 2.3 and it randomly clicks pictures even as it records the location of the phone. Once they are snapped up, the photographs are dumped on a central server so that the physical location of the phone and the user can be determined.

What the makers might have been thinking while developing the app is they could install the malware on the phone of people to be watched, and unearth details of their hideouts.

But then, if you are one of those innocent guys installing the app take a little additional care. This is because the app would have access to the camera and as it runs in the background all private information would be tracked without your knowledge.