© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Last week the security firm Trend Micro found 85 adware apps on Google Play Store that tricked 8 million Android users posing as photography apps and games, but it appears that wasn’t the end. Quick Heal Security Lab has spotted 27 malicious gaming apps of dropper category on Google Play Store, which install an additional malicious app onto the infected device.
These apps, now removed by Google, continuously show prompt to install a fake “Google Play Store”, which is basically adware. Once a user falls prey and installs the fake app, it opens up without any user interaction and shows some stored wallpapers, following which it hides its icon.
The app keeps on displaying full-screen ads at random intervals of time. And since the icon of the app is no longer visible, it becomes hard for users to identify which app is showing the advertisement. It continues to run in the background and shows ads until users do not uninstall it manually from Settings.
Even if the users uninstall the parent malicious app which installed the fake Google Play Store in the first place, the adware stays in the phone. Quick Heal Security Lab recognised that these apps belong to the free Car Racing Games category. The developer of all 27 of these dropper malicious apps is one and same with the name “AFAD Drift Racer”.
As already mentioned above, these apps show a continuous prompt to install Google Play Store with a message that the user needs to install the Google Play Store for gaming purpose. To make an illusion of a genuine Google Play Store app, it uses a similar icon. In reality, some gaming apps need Google Play Games to store a user’s achievement within the game.
Also read | A fake ‘updates’ app tricked millions of Samsung users: Here’s what happened
In case the Google Play Games is not installed in a device or the installed version in the smartphone is outdated, the gaming app shows a pop-up to install/update Google Play Games and redirects the user to Play Store.
To uninstall such the hidden adware, users may head to Settings and go to App & notifications or App Manager. Identify the fake Google Play Store and uninstall it. There is no need to worry that you might uninstall the real app, as the genuine Google Play Store cannot be uninstalled on an Android device.
