Google bans 29 Apps banned from Play Store
Google has been on eliminating Android apps from the Play Store. While a number of those apps have been eliminated because of the authorities orders in India, others have been banned internationally as they didn’t meet Google’s guidelines. According to a current report, 29 apps such as spyware had been eliminated from the Android app store.
These packages wearing spyware had been detected through White Ops’ Satori risk intelligence team. It changed into a part of the safety company’s “CHARTREUSEBLUR” investigation. Most of those packages had been photo editing apps permitting customers to blur the background on their photographs for free.
One such app becomes the Square Photo Blur, which controlled to pass the Play Store security checks. Once installed, the app could disappear from the person home screen display and no longer show “open” characteristic at the Play Store either.
The security researchers located the app now no longer functioning as marketed and rather ran out-of-context(OOC) advertisements for nearly every movement the person finished on their devices, along with unlocking the handset, uninstalling an app, charging the phone, or even switching from cell records to Wi-Fi.
These advertisements could occupy the whole display. Additionally, the Square Photo Blur reportedly launches an OOC net browser randomly.
The banned apps had more than 3.5 million downloads amongst them and could bombard customers with advertisements simply out of nowhere.
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The list of banned Apps is:
- Auto Picture Cut
- Colour Call Flash
- Square Photo Blur v2.0.5
- Square Photo Blur v7.0
- Magic Call Flash
- Easy Blur
- Image Blur
- Auto Photo Blur
- Photo Blur
- Photo Blur Master
- Super Call Screen
- Square Blur Master
- The Square Blur
- Square Blur Photo
- Smart Photo Blur
- Super Call Flash
- Smart Call Flash
- Blur Photo Editor
- Blur Image
- Super Blur
- Square Image Blur
- Super Blur Photo
- Super Photo Blur
- Photo Blur Editor
- Pro Blur Photo
- Auto Photo Cut
- Smart Call Screen
- test.com.flash.call.flashcall.cool
- com.auto.photo.editor.background.eraser.tool.
In addition, all of these apps feature random developer names in this investigation, which are in common English. The ratings and reviews for these applications are also largely negative, with many users complaining about OOC ads.
The Satori team continues to track the threat and is trying to find any potential modifications and features that may arise. The White Ops team recommends that users look for reviews and ratings in the app to assess whether the download is worth it or not.
One thing is clear that the most important thing for Google is the security of it’s data. There are several apps which exploit the data one way or the other and Google is tracking them and trying it’s best to ban them.
People, on the other hand, must be very careful that what kind of App they are downloading and what permissions they are allowing the App to access their information.
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