The day a girl helped discover a network of scam apps

Malicious applications are still a problem on Android, on more than one occasion some have been discovered that have been downloaded millions of times, also in Spain. Many times they are security researchers those who discover these applications, although in the latter case it has been a girl who has helped to discover a worldwide network.

Thanks to your help, it has been possible to discover a network of applications that accumulated more than 2.4 million downloads on Android and iOS. These apps invaded users with adware when they were installed on their phones, posing as other types of apps, so that they could be downloaded.

The best way to detect malicious apps on Android

Malicious applications are a real problem on Android, although there are ways to detect them on the phone and be able to better protect ourselves against them.

This is how a network of scam apps discovered

These apps They pretended to be wallpaper, music or entertainment apps usually. Once installed, they began to bombard the user with advertisements. In addition, to prevent them from being uninstalled, they hid their icon, to avoid knowing where these ads came from. Some of them charged users between 2 and 10 dollars, to obtain money, reaching more than 500,000 dollars.

A girl found a profile on TikTok

who was promoting an application that seemed illegal and reported it to Be Safe Online, a project for children to navigate safely in the Czech Republic. Following this notice, Avast found eleven apps that were part of similar scams. Many of them were promoted on TikTok accounts with more than 300,000 users, which also targeted children in all cases.

Avast reported these scam apps to Google and Apple, in addition to notifying TikTok and Instagram, where they were promoted. Google has already confirmed the removal of them from the Play Store, although other parties such as Apple or Facebook (owner of Instagram) have not responded. Also, some of the apps were still available on iOS, although they are expected to be removed soon.

A new network of scam applications, present on Android and iOS, that luckily it seems to have been deleted already. Although this time it was quite a surprise who helped to detect this network. In all these apps there were bad reviews in the stores, which is an aspect to take into account to identify malicious apps.

The entry The day a girl helped discover a network of scam applications appears first in The Free Android.