238 Google play applications infected by adware

Unfortunately, it is still common for malware to occur on Google Play. It is now a case with adware. This time a total of 238 infected applications have been available for months in the Android application store. During this time, among them, they have accumulated downloads that exceed 440 million downloads, so the number of users possibly affected is enormous.

238 apps on Google Play infected by adware

All of them had been published in the store by the same company, in addition, in all cases they had the same malware. It has been confirmed that they have been removed from the store already.

Adware in apps

In this case, it was an excess of advertising the problem of these applications. In them the plugin called BeiTaAd was installed, which has broken the barriers of Google Play Protect these months. This caused these applications to display a huge number of ads, which made it practically impossible to use them. Although the worst thing is that they also showed ads outside the app, such as in the settings or the phone's lock screen.

In this way, the phone became almost unusable, as many of the users affected by this problem have said. The good part is that these 238 apps have been removed entirely from the app store.

Although it is annoying for users, in addition to making it clear that there are certain security measures that have to be improved in Google Play. Since it is too easy for a company with so many applications generating so many problems for so long.

Arstechnica font