Alert! Google blocks these 11 smartphone apps – Check Full list and remove them now

Another incident of Android apps harming users by injecting malware on their smartphones has come to light. According to researchers at Check Point, as many as 11 apps were identified which were infected with the notorious Joker malware. Google has been tracking these apps since 2017 and has finally removed them from its Play Store. 

Check Point researchers discovered a new variant of the Joker malware that was present inside legitimate apps. Android users who may have any of these apps installed should get them removed immediately. The list of apps detected include -

com.imagecompress.android

com.contact.withme.texts

com.hmvoice.friendsms

com.relax.relaxation.androidsms

com.cheery.message.sendsms (two different instances)

com.peason.lovinglovemessage

com.file.recovefiles

com.LPlocker.lockapps

com.remindme.alram

com.training.memorygame

What were these apps doing?

WATCH | Tech Talks EP 22

According to the researchers, these apps were subscribing to premium services on behalf of users, without their knowledge. This means that you could robbed of your money without actually subscribing to these services. Hackers developed an old way of getting inside apps they could pass Google Play’s protections.

Check Point added that despite Google Play’s security features, the Joker malware is still very tricky to detect. And it may very well make it back to the Play Store.

Earlier this year, Google released a report where it said that it had detected and removed 1,700 malicious “Bread” apps from the Play Store. These Bread apps are ones with the Joker malware.  oogle said that these apps were removed even before users could download it. 

Last week, Google had removed 25 apps from its Play Store that were allegedly stealing your data. The problem was identified by French cyber-security firm Evina, which claimed that these apps stole Facebook credentials of users. The firm even mentioned that by the time they were taken down, these 25 apps were downloaded some 2.34 million times in total. 

All these apps come with different names but served the same purpose. Some were step counters, image editors, video editor apps, others were wallpaper apps, flashlight applications, file managers, and mobile games.