Anyone owning an Android phone should head to their App Drawer and perform an urgent spring clean. That’s the latest alert from security experts at Dr.Web who say they discovered a dozen dodgy applications that had somehow managed to bypass Google’s strict rules and end up on the Play Store.
Over a million people have since downloaded them with many now finding their phones are infected with annoying adware which bombards screens with unwanted adverts. Some of the apps also tried to push users to money-losing casino sites and dangerous investment scams.
With these features going against the Play Store’s terms and conditions, Google has now banned them all from appearing in the future. Sadly, that’s not stopped a massive amount of Android users from already installing them.
One app, called Super Skibydi Killer, has amassed over one million downloads whilst another, called Agent Shooter, managed to get itself on around 500,000 devices.
To make matters worse, once downloaded, the cyber crooks have come up with a cunning way of hiding the applications from the screen which means phone users end up forgetting they have ever been downloaded.
• Super Skibydi Killer – 1,000,000 downloads
• Agent Shooter – 500,000
• Rainbow Stretch – 50,000
• Rubber Punch 3D – 500,000
• Eternal Maze (Yana Pospyelova) – 50,000
• Jungle Jewels (Vaibhav Wable) – 10,000
• Stellar Secrets (Pepperstocks) – 10,000
• Fire Fruits (Sandr Sevill) – 10,000
• Cowboy’s Frontier (Precipice Game Studios) – 10,000
• Enchanted Elixir (Acomadyi) – 10,000
• Love Emoji Messenger (Korsinka Vimoipan) – 50,000
• Beauty Wallpaper HD (fm0989184) – 1,000