Google’s Play Store is a vast world for Android applications. May it be a game, cab booking app or a simple calculator, everything is available in Google Play Store. But it is also popular to contain many malicious applications that contain the risk of damaging your devices in many different ways like slowing down of phone, crashing of various software applications and many other problems.

Researches have revealed that there are two applications present in the Google Play Store that have been covertly clicking on various ads. This is not only it. The apps are doing so from the very devices of the users, the Android devices.

Records say that these applications were downloaded already by more than one and a half million users. More than a year these two applications remained undiscovered in Google Play Store, the report stated.

Reports have also stated that Google has already terminated these two applications with some other muddling applications from its Play Store saving the Android devices from getting infected with malicious software.

Knowing About the Applications

Let us have a check on what are those applications. It is a notepad app and a fitness app. They have been doing this wicked task for a long time and people could not actually understand what was happening with their Android devices.

They remained strangers to this occurrence as they were popping up ads off the screen and clicking on them furtively. The ads contained many malicious links and other sorts of flaws which led to a major amount of problems in Android mobile phones.

Android app ads are not something that the user appreciates. So, they did without any notice of the users. They did it not once, not twice, and not even thrice but multiple times.

Researchers from a cybersecurity firm known as Symantec revealed that these two apps were developed by a company named Idea Master. It not only promoted such an act but also led to a major disruption in android phone functioning.

Did the Developer Respond?

The one who developed these two applications did not show any immediate response after the issue was reported. That is when Idea Master was totally thrown out of the Play Store and was banned. Consequently, those applications are also out of the Play Store family.

The names of these two menacing applications are “Idea Note: OCR Text Scanner, GTD, Color Notes” and “Beauty Fitness: daily workout, best HIIT coach” respectively.

Android is already known for keeping malicious content in its Play Store compared to the Store of the Apple phones and tablets which are run by iOS. This is because of the open ecosystem that Android possesses.

It is definitely true that no other web store provides this wide range of applications and software as the Play Store if Google’s Android provides. But, along with that, there are gateways for potential hackers to make an entrance into different devices through Play Store.

Android received millions and millions of reports from users against plenty of applications that were causing problems either by hacking or by injecting any sort of malware.

Google either fixed those applications or removed the applications from the Play Store permanently. Then, this issue evolved and Idea Master had to pay the prices obviously.

The problem has not yet ended. Why? Well, it is because new hackers are continuing to make new paths to enter into people’s devices discovering new ways.

People Needed an Answer

But people continued to ask why this ad fraud remained out of a notice for such a long time. Well, you do deserve an answer. This happened because of the code that was hidden in android packers. They are generally used for the protection of donnish property. This is also the researchers came up with.

After the installation of the application was complete, what it did was show ads outside the display view of the device. The app used to click on them automatically. As the ads remained out of the screen view, people naturally could not see this taking place.

This automated click on the ads did something that any user will not appreciate. It used to commit ad fraud by draining out resources from Android mobile phones.

Also, what it did was draining out phones’ battery and unnecessary loss of mobile data. This started happening even before the researchers came to know about ad frauds.

People’s Review

People already started coming up with various reports after seeing various problems that were actually caused by these two applications. They did not know the exact reason behind the muddles though.

A review on the Play Store even said that the application was not bad but useful. The reviewer also added that it had too many ads and that it was slowing down the device.

There was another review of this application. This person said about the notepad application that it had disturbing ads and they were basically annoying and those were just the ads that the users saw.

If somebody uses a procedure to hide advertisements from the users, it gives a clear allowance to the advertisements as well as the malicious content to be displayed freely.

Then the application can take action on an automated ad-clicking procedure that produces as well as creates revenues.

According to the cybersecurity firm Symantec, the devices that will carry this application software will face problems like battery drainage, slowing down of phone’s performance, and also a potential increase in the usage of mobile data because of frequent visits to advertisement websites. These take place as threat actors generate auto clicks and ad revenue.

Concluding with Ending Remarks

People had to suffer a lot not only because of these two applications but also many similar apps that cause similar problems. Hackers are everywhere. The only thing Android has to do is tightening its security systems.

Hopefully, this article was useful enough to let you know about the menacing applications. Thanks to Google for eliminating these applications from the Play Store.

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