Get rid of these 30+ Android apps right now: Here's why

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Google Play Store

Google Play Store has been home to several malicious apps and as part of a new discovery, more such apps have been found on Google's app store. As discovered by cybersecurity firm WhiteOps, more than 30 popular Android apps have been detected with malware in them that can cause security issues for users. Read on to know more about these apps.

Delete these 30+ popular Android apps to remain safe

As per the research, the malign Android apps are mostly beauty and cameras apps and have garnered around 20 million downloads in totality on the Google Play Store. The apps have now been removed from the Play Store. The Android apps come with malware and come with a number of ads, mostly fraudulent ones. The apps would indulge users with out-of-context ads, out-of-context navigation, and even removed the app icons from the home screen or the apps folder so that users just can't remove them.

WhiteOps' blog post reads, "What these apps all have in common—besides their fraudulent tactics—is their focus on beauty. Most purport to be selfie apps that add beauty filters to users’ pictures, while at the same time showing ads out of context and making it nearly impossible to remove the apps themselves."

It is further suggested that the cybercriminals behind these group of apps launched a new app every 11 days, which were then taken down after 17 days. Despite the short period of listing on the Play Store, the apps gathered an average of 565,833 installs. Furthermore, hackers would remove/add fraudulent app codes to the app to avoid suspicion.

The apps would also contain DEX files in their APKs in the form of packers to avoid the Google Play Store and researchers detect them. Here is a list of the 38 fraudulent apps that were recently removed from the Google Play Store: