Google banned another 19 malicious Android apps, users are advised to delete them immediately

Google has banned another list of 19 apps from its Play Store. These apps were downloaded millions of times by Android smartphone users around the globe.
According to the Threat Intelligence and Research team from White Ops, these 19 apps are capable of filling devices with unwanted and highly irritating adverts.

These apps after installing bombarded users with out-of-context interstitial ads as, often referred as Adwares. An interstitial also pops up after the app is closed, rendering twice at intervals of a few seconds apart, as well as when an user uninstalls any other app. There is code present for launching ads at other times: whenever a user unlocks the screen, starts charging the phone or switches from cellular data-to-Wi-Fi and vice versa. Some of the apps were able to hide itself immediately after installing into devices. This is a common method deployed by hackers making it much harder for people to find and delete the applications from their devices.

White Ops dubbed this investigation CHARTREUSEBLUR: the majority of apps include the word “blur” in their package name, and many purport to be photo editors allowing a user to blur sections of the image.

The “chartreuse”, well, that’s just because it’s fun to say and the liqueur is tasty – White Ops.

These apps when combined were downloaded more than 3.5 millions times. Google has since removed the applications from its Play Store, android users are advised to delete them from their phones as well.

Here are all apps list that should be removed immediately:

Apps List	Installs
Auto Picture Cut	100,000+
Color Call Flash	50,000+
Square Photo Blur	500,000+
Square Blur Photo	500,000+
Magic Call Flash	50,000+
Easy Blur	100,000+
Image Blur	100,000+
Auto Photo Blur	100,000+
Photo Blur	500,000+
Photo Blur Master	100,000+
Super Call Screen	100,000+
Square Blur Master	100,000+
Square Blur	50,000+
Smart Blur Photo	500,000+
Smart Photo Blur	500,000+
Super Call Flash	100,000+
Smart Call Flash	50,000+
Blur Photo Editor	5,000+
Blur Image	10,000+

How to remove these apps from your device:

If you can find the app icon in your app list, immediately uninstall these apps. If you can’t find the icon, you may have to dig in all apps listed inside your settings menu. Alternatively you can login to your Google Play Store account and can uninstall these apps in My apps & Games> Installed list.

White Ops team also have suggested few methods to identify potential fraudulent apps on Play Store:

Do the reviews talk about ads popping up all the time?
Do the reviews talk about the app disappearing or being unable to uninstall it?
Do the reviews have a lot of complaints that the app doesn’t work as advertised?
Are there a lot of 5-star reviews but the recent reviews are mostly 1-star?
Does the app publisher have a lot of downloads in a very short amount of time?

If the answer is yes to any of the above, then it might be bogus.

Source

How to remove these apps from your device:

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