Google is on the roll again. This time, it reportedly took down 29 suspicious Google apps from the Play Store. And the surprising thing was the fact that these applications had already been downloaded over millions of times. Read on to find out more.
What Do These Apps Do?
As reported, several apps which are downloaded from the Play Store tend to display objectionable links and content on their screens. The links and clickable content then redirects the users to ‘scam’ websites, where information is misused. Supposedly, these ‘fake’ apps can access remote ad configuration servers for performing their phishing attacks. Previously, Google banned some Crypto-mining apps from their Play Store, due to policy changes by Google in July 2018. It also banned Chrome crypto-mining apps from the Chrome store. Crypto-jacking was a pretty common activity at that time. Hackers used to take over user’s devices for crypto-mining, even on mobile devices.
List Of Malicious Apps
Below is the list of the apps that were pulled off the Google Play Store. If you still have any app from the list in your phone, go ahead and uninstall it. It’s for the best
- Pro Camera Beauty
- Cartoon Art Photo
- Emoji Camera
- Artistic effect Filter
- Art Editor
- Beauty Camera
- Selfie Camera Pro
- Horizon Beauty Camera
- Super Camera
- Art Effects for Photo
- Awesome Cartoon Art
- Art filter Photo
- Art Filter Photo Effects
- Cartoon Effect
- Art Effect
- Photo Editor
- Wallpapers HD
- Magic Art Filter Photo Editor
- Fill Art Photo Editor
- ArtFlipPhotoEditing
- Art Filter
- Cartoon Art Photo Filter
- Art Filter Photo Editor
- Pixture
- Art Effect
- Photo Art Effect
- Cartoon Photo Filter
App Demographics
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A lot of these apps are Beauty camera based apps, which lure users via promises of earning “a lot of money in a short span of time”. Our sources say that a huge percentage of downloads were performed in Asia, particularly India. This clearly indicates the kind of audience such developers are targeting. These apps are tough to remove from the application list because they create failsafes such as creating fake app shortcuts. These apps provide irritating full-screen ads, that are very disturbing and take you to another webpage. Thankfully, Google is trying to get rid of such apps, which seems like a good move.
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