Google pulls down Several Malicious Photo Apps From Play Store.

Google Play Store

Photo sharing is something very common in the social media world. People normally download apps to edit and beautify their photos. It has emerged that there were several photo apps on Play Store that were stealing users’ information.

Google recently pulled 29 camera and photo apps from the Play Store after it emerged that they were pushing intrusive ads, scamming users and even stealing private content.

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Some of these apps push full-screen ads, including porn, and some run phishing scams that steal your personal info under the guise of contests.

Some of camera apps which were meant to beautify your photos used that opportunity to just steal the uploaded pictures and give users a fake update prompt.


Related Article: What is Google Play Protect?


The apps would use multiple compression archives (aka packers) to stop analysis, and layer on thick encryption for their remote servers. Users would also have trouble removing them, sometimes having to restart their devices.

Other apps of this malicious nature would hide from the quality app list and would make sure they weren’t linked to the ads.

Apparently, eleven of these apps in question had been downloaded over a hundred thousand times, and three of those over a million times and that’s quite a number of victims.

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As Google finds ways to realize some of these apps sooner, it is now essentially up to users to stay a watch out for suspicious apps.

Examples of such apps include: Pro Beauty Camera, Cartoon Art Photo and Emoji Camera among others. These three in particular had over 1 Million downloads on Google Play Store.

Personal security correlates directly to your online safety. You therefore need to be very careful while dealing with many apps. Make sure you update them regularly and download from Play Store or App Store alone.

Major Credits: Engadget and Trend Micro

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