These 9 apps were stealing your important data! Google removed apps from Play Store

Google has removed nine apps from its Play Store after researchers showed they secretly stole users’ Facebook log-in credentials. The apps were hidden under names that sounded like useful everyday tools and apps. These include Rubbish Cleaner and Horoscope Daily. According to a report, these malicious apps had about 5.9 million combined downloads on the Google Play store while PIP Photo alone had 5.8 million downloads. There were five different types of malware. Google had earlier removed three apps made for children due to privacy violations.

Dr. Web, an antivirus service, Report It says its malware analysts discovered nine suspicious apps. These included Processing Photo, App Lock Keep, Rubbish Cleaner, Horoscope Daily, Horoscope Pi, App Lock Manager, Lockit Master, Inwell Fitness, and PIP Photo apps. These apps allegedly acted as Trojan malware and stole users’ Facebook log-in credentials after providing users with the option to disable ads by logging in through their social media accounts. Dr. Webb’s report Ars Technica Saw.

These apps tricked users by showing an exact copy of Facebook’s log-in page. Instead the apps loaded a JavaScript command that stole their log-in credentials. The apps also apparently stole browser cookies from the authorization session. All were malware variants and they all allegedly used similar JavaScript code to steal users’ data. The report also said that three of the malware variants were native Android apps, and two were built using Google’s Flutter SDK.

The malware variants identified by Dr. Web are-
Android.PWS.Facebook.13, Android.PWS.Facebook.14, Android.PWS.Facebook.15, Android.PWS.Facebook.17, and Android.PWS.Facebook.18.

A Google spokesperson told Ars Technica that they have also banned the app developers of all nine apps from the Google Play store, which will prevent these developer accounts from publishing any new apps to the market. This is a positive step by Google, but a new developer account under a different name can be created for a nominal fee of $25 (approximately Rs 1,900).

Users are advised not to download any app from an unknown developer, regardless of the number of downloads the app has. In this case, PIP Photo got the maximum downloads at 5.8 million, followed by Processing Photo at 500,000 downloads. Any user who has downloaded these apps should thoroughly check their device and Facebook account for suspicious activity.