Pretty much every single person that has been paying attention to the situation would agree that for the most part, Google’s review system for the apps that it allows onto its Play store is in dire need of review itself. This is because of the fact that pretty much every other day we end up hearing stories regarding how an app or two managed to slip through the cracks and started wreaking havoc, but the latest controversy surrounding this sort of thing may be the worst to come out in quite a while because of the number of apps involved.
It turns out that no less than seventeen apps, including car racing game, background wallpapers, bar-code scanners, file managers and more, were able to get through Google’s defenses, a number that indicates that these defenses might not have been all that great to begin with. According to Bitdefender, these apps, with over 550,000 install in total, showed people that downloaded them really aggressive ads, popups that were pretty much outside the policy that all apps have to conform to if they want to be available on the Google Play Store.
The way these apps work is that when they get downloaded their code gets split into multiple different resource files and the app doesn’t start displaying aggressive ads until about four hours after it is installed. This means that people might just use it and assume that it’s a normal app before the aggressive ads start coming in.
These apps are a sign that Google really needs to change the way it does things otherwise it might start losing users. It’s important to note that these apps aren’t exactly malware. They would more probably be classified as riskware, which is why Google might not have taken immediate action against them, but since they do impact the user experience swifter action should definitely have been taken.
Although Google has removed all the reported apps from its Play store, Android users are still advised to delete these apps from their smartphones:
Read next: Beware this Android Malware Disables Google Play Store Malware Detection
It turns out that no less than seventeen apps, including car racing game, background wallpapers, bar-code scanners, file managers and more, were able to get through Google’s defenses, a number that indicates that these defenses might not have been all that great to begin with. According to Bitdefender, these apps, with over 550,000 install in total, showed people that downloaded them really aggressive ads, popups that were pretty much outside the policy that all apps have to conform to if they want to be available on the Google Play Store.
The way these apps work is that when they get downloaded their code gets split into multiple different resource files and the app doesn’t start displaying aggressive ads until about four hours after it is installed. This means that people might just use it and assume that it’s a normal app before the aggressive ads start coming in.
These apps are a sign that Google really needs to change the way it does things otherwise it might start losing users. It’s important to note that these apps aren’t exactly malware. They would more probably be classified as riskware, which is why Google might not have taken immediate action against them, but since they do impact the user experience swifter action should definitely have been taken.
Although Google has removed all the reported apps from its Play store, Android users are still advised to delete these apps from their smartphones:
Read next: Beware this Android Malware Disables Google Play Store Malware Detection
