Earlier today, Google banned 29 apps from its Play Store for allegedly spamming users and injecting malicious ads to their devices. The White Ops’ Satori threat intelligence team has managed to find 29 unique apps that spam users in different ways. All these apps were a part of the ‘CHARTREUSEBLUR’ investigation.
Out of these 29 apps, some disappear from your phone after installation while some bombards users with annoying ads. In fact, you will need to head over to the Settings menu and find the app in a long list to open it since the app icon doesn’t appear on the screen. What’s interesting is the fact that banned apps have more than 3.5 million downloads.
Google bans 29 apps from the Play Store – uninstall them right now!
Since these apps are banned from Play Store, we will recommend users uninstall all these apps from your device if you have any. You will have to manually uninstall them by heading over to Settings>>Apps.
Unsurprisingly, most of these are photo editing applications. You can find the complete list of these 29 banned apps down below.
Auto Picture Cut
Color Call Flash
Square Photo Blur v2.0.5
Square Photo Blur v7.0
Magic Call Flash
Easy Blur
Image Blur
Auto Photo Blur
Photo Blur
Photo Blur Master
Super Call Screen
Square Blur Master
The Square Blur
Square Blur Photo
Smart Photo Blur
Super Call Flash
Smart Call Flash
Blur Photo Editor
Blur Image
Super Blur
Square Image Blur
Super Blur Photo
Super Photo Blur
Photo Blur Editor
Pro Blur Photo
Auto Photo Cut
Smart Call Screen
test.com.flash.call.flashcall.cool
com.auto.photo.editor.background.eraser.tool
Why these 29 apps got banned?
As mentioned earlier, the list does contain some popular apps that have a huge number of downloads. Square Photo Blur is one such application among the many. For some unknown reasons, these apps managed to bypass the Play Store’s security checks. In fact, users will not be able to open the app even from the Play Store itself.
According to the security researchers, all these apps do not function as advertised and runs out-of-context ads for almost every action performed. We’re talking about actions such as unlocking the device, charging the device, and even switching between WiFi and mobile data. Some apps also launch random pop-ups on the web browser for almost every other action.
With that said, it is highly recommended to remove all these 29 apps from your device as soon as possible. We will also recommend installing only trusted apps. You should look for users’ ratings, reviews, and do a small research before any unknown application on your device.
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