Recently, Google has removed more than 30 popular Android apps from its Play Store. Read on to know more about it…
Recently, Google has removed more than 30 popular Android apps from its Play Store because these apps are malicious in nature. Most of these malicious apps add beauty filters to your photos. These apps will not be available for download from the Play Store for new users. However, they have already been installed by 20 million users and they need to make sure that these apps are uninstalled from smartphones.
Malicious Apps
Among the 30+ apps, it’s the third-party selfie apps that have found to be most fraudulent. As per security researchers WhiteOps, the apps have the ability to bombard users with unwanted ads and redirect them to websites without ever clicking on a link. It should also be noted that in some cases, it was nearly “impossible” for users to delete these apps once downloaded.
“What these apps all have in common – besides their fraudulent tactics – is their focus on beauty. Most purport to be selfie apps that add beauty filters to users’ pictures, while at the same time showing ads out of context and making it nearly impossible to remove the apps themselves,” WhiteOps explained.
In the time since that first app was published, the fraudsters published a new app every 11 days on average. Notably, most of these apps were available for a duration of around 17 days each before they were pulled down.
But despite their short life on the Google Play Store they still managed to amass over 500,000 downloads which makes the attack extremely serious. If that wasn’t bad enough, things got worse in September 2019 with the criminals changing tactics.
Working Mechanism
The new threats were made possible by either hiding the malicious code or deleting it completely – which meant they were able to bypass Google’s security. But at any moment it seems the nasty adware could then be re-enabled via a simple update which is why Google has now removed all of the apps from its marketplace despite many of them appearing to be clean.
List of Malicious Apps
Here is the list of malicious Android apps which have been removed from Google Play Store
Yoriko Camera, Solu Camera, Lite Beauty Camera, Beauty Collage Lite, Beauty and Filters camera, Photo Collage and beauty camera, Gaty Beauty Camera, Pand Selife Beauty Camera, Cartoon Photo Editor and Selfie Beauty Camera, Benbu Seilfe Beauty Camera, Pinut Selife Beauty and Photo Editor, Mood Photo Editor and Selife Beauty Camera, Rose Photo Editor and Selfie Beauty Camera, Selife Beauty Camera and Photo Editor, Fog Selife Beauty Camera, First Selife Beauty Camera and Photo Editor, Vanu Selife Beauty Camera, Sun Pro Beauty Cameraa, Funny Sweet Beauty Camera, Little Bee Beauty Camera, Beauty Camera and Photo Editor Pro, Grass Beauty Camera, Ele Beauty Camera, Flower Beauty Camera, Best Selfie Beauty Camera, Orange Camera, Sunny Beauty Camera, Pro Selfie Beauty Camera, Selfie Beauty Camera Pro, Elegant Beauty Cam-2019.
