By Jon Fingas, Engadget
Google still has to deal with malicious Android apps slipping through the cracks despite improvements in its screening technology, and some of the offenders are worse than others. Case in point: the company recently pulled
29 camera and photo apps from the Play Store after it became clear they
were meant to push intrusive ads, scam users and even steal content.
Multiple apps will push full-screen ads, including porn, and some will
use the opportunity to run phishing scams that steal your personal info
under the guise of contests. Another group of camera apps were
ostensibly meant to beautify your photos, but really just stole the
uploaded pictures and gave users a fake update prompt.
The
apps went out of their way to disguise their malicious nature. They'd
use multiple compression archives (aka packers) to prevent analysis, and
layer on thick encryption for their remote servers. Users would also
have trouble removing them, to boot. They'd hide from the standard app
ilst (you couldn't just drag them out to delete them), and would make
sure they weren't linked to the ads.
This wouldn't be as much of
an issue if it weren't that the apps were popular before Google removed
them. All told, 11 of the apps had been downloaded over 100,000 times,
and three of those over a million times -- that's a lot of victims.
Unless Google can find a way to catch these apps sooner, it may be up to
users to keep an eye out for suspicious apps.
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