Beware! Google has removed these 29 apps for injecting adware – Check FULL LIST and uninstall them now

Yet another shocking case of apps harming smartphones has come to light. Search engine giant Google has removed as many as 29 apps from the Play Store that were found filled with adware. These Android apps had over 3.5 million downloads on the Play Store. The apps were discovered by White Ops’ Satori threat intelligence team as part of their “CHARTREUSEBLUR” investigation. Most of these malicious apps were photo editing apps which had a blur feature. That’s how the investigation got blur in its name. 

What were these apps doing? 

According to the team, these Android apps were found running out-of-context (OOC) ads which are said to be used to avoid detection. They claimed that after installation, the launch icons of these apps would immediately disappear from the phone. This made it difficult for users to remove the malicious app from their phones. 

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Ads that popped on up through these apps happened within intervals of only a few seconds. The team said that every action performed on the apps led to ad pop-ups. Some of these actions include unlocking the phone, uninstalling an app, charging the phone or even switching from mobile data to Wi-Fi.  

Full list of apps removed 

Auto Picture Cut 

Color Call Flash 

Square Photo Blur 

Square Blur Photo 

Magic Call Flash 

Easy Blur 

Image Blur 

Auto Photo Blur 

Photo Blur 

Photo Blur Master 

Super Call Screen 

Square Blur Master 

Square Blur 

Smart Blur Photo 

Smart Photo Blur 

Super Call Flash 

Smart Call Flash 

Blur Photo Editor 

Blur Image 

What should users do? 

As of now, all these apps have been removed from the Google Play Store. However, if you still have them on your phone, you should uninstall them right now. The Satori team says that there could be more apps like these and advises to look out for hints like - reviews of the apps mentioning ads popping up all the time, apps disappearing after downloading, a lot of 5-star reviews but recent ones are mostly 1-star, app doesn’t work as advertised, app received a lot of downloads in a very short time. Some of these points can act as indicators that the app is probably a malicious one.