If this sounds like déjà vu to you, you’re not wrong. The cycle of malware on Google Play getting discovered and promptly deleted has been going on for years now, and the problem doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Tap or click here to see the last batch of malware deleted from the Google Play store. To help you secure your phone, we have the complete list of malicious apps to watch out for. If any of these are present on your device, you need to delete them now.
Surprise! New malicious adware found on Google Play Store
Security researchers working for WhiteOps have a new report detailing malicious apps that were present on the Google Play Store with millions of downloads. These programs primarily masqueraded as beauty filters and camera apps, but once installed by a user, they begin to spam advertisements and sudden redirects to scam websites. Some of these apps took efforts to remove the malicious code to keep up the appearance of normalcy, but not all of them went this far. In fact, some apps continued spamming users over the course of several months starting back in late 2019 all the way up to mid-2020. You may also like: Internet-connected devices vulnerable to new scary hack To make matters worse, the malicious apps would sometimes delete their own app icon, which can make it difficult to find and uninstall them. In response, Google did what it always does in this situation: Remove the offending apps. Unfortunately, this does little to mitigate the problem for victims who may have already installed the apps without knowing how dangerous they were.
In the nick of time: The offending apps
When malicious apps get removed from Google Play, it can be difficult to find out their specific names after the fact. Fortunately, we have the complete list of apps to examine your phone for and remove. If you have any of these apps on your device, delete them immediately. Regardless of how fun or useful their features may seem, it’s not worth dealing with potentially dangerous advertisements and annoying redirects to spam and phishing websites. Here’s what you need to delete:
Yoroko CameraSolu CameraLite Beauty CameraBeauty Collage LiteBeauty & Filters CameraPhoto Collage & Beauty CameraBeauty Camera Selfie FilterGaty Beauty CameraPand Selife Beauty CameraCatoon Photo Editor & Selfie Beauty CameraBenbu Selife Beauty CameraPinut Selife Beauty Camera & Photo EditorMood Photo Editor & Selife Beauty CameraRose Photo Editor & Selfie Beauty CameraSelife Beauty Camera & Photo EditorFog Selife Beauty CameraFirst Selife Beauty Camera & Photo EditorVanu Selife Beauty CameraSun Pro Beauty CameraaFunny Sweet Beauty CameraLittle Bee Beauty CameraBeauty Camera & Photo Editor ProGrass Beauty CameraEle Beauty CameraFlower Beauty CameraBest Selfie Beauty CameraOrange CameraSunny Beauty CameraPro Selfie Beauty CameraSelfie Beauty Camera ProElegant Beauty Cam-2019
As you can see, it’s a significantly long list of apps, and to make matters worse, most had download levels ranging from 500,000 installs to millions. In all likelihood, many people are already affected without knowing. Once the apps are deleted, however, you shouldn’t run into any more issues. The code that executes to take you to spam sites and advertisements is embedded in the apps. If you do have any other problems, you might want to consider restoring your Android phone to factory settings. Tap or click here to see how to do this. Just make sure you’ve backed up your data before going through with a restore. While it’s good that Google takes alerts like this seriously, one has to wonder why it can’t adopt Apple’s model of tight scrutiny on app submissions. If Google caught malicious apps before they ever had a chance to be downloaded, we might not even need to run reports like this. We won’t hold our breath, though.
