There’s yet another Android app warning that’s been issued to users and ignoring it could prove costly. It’s been confirmed that 11 popular applications have recently been banned by Google with the block coming into force for good reason. It appears that the software contained money-stealing trojans that signed users up to expensive monthly subscription plans without the phone owner knowing.
The issue was spotted by the team at Kaspersky with Google then quickly removing the offending apps from its Play Store.
It could be an expensive mistake not checking your phone with experts warning that these monthly payments often go unnoticed. It’s also worth noting that although the apps are no longer available to download, anyone who has already installed them will continue to be charged.
“Affected users often fail to discover the unwanted subscriptions right away, let alone find out how they happened in the first place. All this makes subscription Trojans a reliable source of illegal income in the eyes of cybercriminals,” Kaspersky’s Dmitry Kalinin explained.
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It’s a worrying problem especially as the apps in question are thought to have been downloaded over 615,000 times.
Here’s the full list of apps and if they are on your phone we’d delete them right away and check your monthly subscriptions.
• Beauty Camera Plus (com.beauty.camera.plus.photoeditor)
• Beauty Photo Camera (com.apps.camera.photos)
• Beauty Slimming Photo Editor (com.beauty.slimming.pro)
• Fingertip Graffiti (com.draw.graffiti)
• GIF Camera Editor (com.gif.camera.editor)
• HD 4K Wallpaper (com.hd.h4ks.wallpaper)
• Impressionism Pro Camera (com.impressionism.prozs.app)
• Microclip Video Editor (com.microclip.vodeoeditor)
• Night Mode Camera Pro (com.urox.opixe.nightcamreapro)
• Photo Camera Editor (com.toolbox.photoeditor)
• Photo Effect Editor (com.picture.pictureframe)
It’s thought that the majority of users affected by this trojan were based in areas such as Thailand, Poland, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore although there have been reports across the whole globe.
“Our data suggests that the Trojan has been active since 2022,” Kalinin added. “We have found eleven Fleckpe-infected apps on Google Play, which have been installed on more than 620,000 devices. All of the apps had been removed from the marketplace by the time our report was published but the malicious actors might have deployed other, as yet undiscovered, apps, so the real number of installations could be higher.”
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