Google downloads 29 Android photo apps for scams

Google has withdrawn 29 Android apps from the Play Store for stealing photos and promoting fraud. Some of them have millions of downloads. See the list if you have downloaded any of them and if so delete it immediately.

Google still faces malicious Android apps that manage to slip out of the Play Store despite improvements has done recently in the code security.

In this case, the company withdrew recently from the Play Store 29 camera and photo apps after it became clear that they were intended to promote annoying ads, scammers and even steal content. These apps promoted full-screen ads, including pornography, while some of them ran phishing scams to steal your personal information under the guise of contests.

Another group of photography applications claimed that it could beautify your photos, but in reality it just stole the photos you were uploading.

According to Trend Micro, applications were using multiple files compressions (aka packers) to prevent analysis, as well as deep encryption for the remote servers. There is also the possibility that you will find it difficult to delete them.

The problem is that these applications were quite popular before Google removed them. In total, 11 of the applications have been downloaded more than 100.000 times, and three of them more than a million times, which means that the victims are many.

And as we have said before, since Google can not find a way to catch these applications at birth, for every application you download you should watch it and keep in mind for suspicious moves.

The list of malicious Android applications is as follows: