December 6, 2023

There are many causes to personal an Android telephone as an alternative of an iPhone, from the plethora of decisions to the decrease costs to the experimental designs, however Android machine homeowners additionally should be cautious about what they set up. Google incessantly prunes the Play Retailer of malicious Android apps, however not earlier than hundreds of thousands of customers obtain them.

In September alone, the IT safety vendor Dr.Internet uncovered greater than a dozen such apps on Google Play. They’ve all since been eliminated, however when you downloaded any of those apps whereas they had been out there, it’s best to delete them instantly.

This week, Dr.Internet’s month-to-month cellular risk report (through Bleeping Pc) highlighted a number of apps contaminated with Joker, FakeApp, and HiddenAds trojans. Altogether, these apps have been downloaded over 2 million instances, so likelihood is excessive that numerous Android customers nonetheless have one or two of them put in on their telephones.

Up first are the adware trojans, which disguise themselves as video games. As soon as put in, these apps attempt to cover from the consumer by changing their icons with clear photographs, leaving the app names clean, and even pretending to be a cellular browser like Chrome:

  • Tremendous Skibydi Killer | 1,000,000 downloads
  • Agent Shooter | 500,000 downloads
  • Rubber Punch 3D | 500,000 downloads
  • Rainbow Stretch | 50,000 downloads

The safety vendor additionally identified a number of FakeApp trojans, a few of which look like monetary software program and others that function as video games:

  • Everlasting Maze | 50,000 downloads
  • Cowboy’s Frontier | 10,000 downloads
  • Enchanted Elixir | 10,000 downloads
  • Hearth Fruits | 10,000 downloads
  • Jungle Jewels | 10,000 downloads
  • Stellar Secrets and techniques | 10,000 downloads
  • GazEndow Financial | 1,000 downloads
  • FinancialFusion | 1,000 downloads
  • Monetary Vault | 500 downloads
  • MoneyMentor | 0+ downloads

Lastly, there are two Joker trojans that Android customers must be looking out for that subscribe victims to paid companies with out their data or permission:

  • Love Emoji Messenger | 50,000 downloads
  • Magnificence Wallpaper HD | 1,000 downloads

You may by no means be too cautious when downloading apps from Google Play.