But if you’re the kind of adventurous (or, let’s be honest, careless) user who likes to regularly take their chances on generic titles from little-known developers, you might want to pay close attention to the following list. Here are the latest apps you need to delete and avoid at all costs.
There are undoubtedly varying degrees of risk connected with various malware-spreading campaigns, even though Android users have probably grown accustomed to hearing about various threats to their mobile security and data privacy in recent years and have learned to stop freaking out whenever a new virus is discovered. As terrifying as it may sound, Trend Micro’s most recent detection of a similar effort arguably reaches the highest level. Of course, there’s nothing to worry about if you only ever download the most well-liked apps from the Google Play Store that have the most good ratings and if you’ve even made it a habit to regularly check some of those reviews for the typical red flags.
Highlights
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As you can notice, the advertised purpose of most of the highly invasive apps on the above list is fairly similar… and broad, thus ensuring a wide net is cast in the search for innocent users who just want their mobile devices to run faster or perform tasks like scanning documents, editing photos, and recording calls with minimal effort and no cost. While free to download and harmless in appearance, DawDropper-infected apps like the ones listed above can wreak absolute havoc on your phones, violating pretty much every level of privacy and security you can possibly think of.
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Recognize any of those names? Search for them on your phone right away and hit the “uninstall” button. You can thank us later. Delete these hair-raising Android apps before they gain full control of your phone and money Distributed via Google Play (where else?) to an unknown number of Android users, these malicious apps are fortunately no longer in (official) circulation, so they shouldn’t be able to add to their victim count anymore… unless you download them from an alternative source, which you should never, ever, EVER do with any app whatsoever.
That’s definitely a little scarier than your usual adware or even fleeceware campaign, and unfortunately, this “DawDropper” banking trojan is not an entirely new threat… nor do we expect it to completely go away anytime soon. Even if Google appears to have taken all the necessary measures against this particular set of malicious apps, promptly kicking them out of the Play Store when informed of their dangerous behavior, there doesn’t seem to be anything the search giant can do to prevent other such infected apps from surfacing again… and again… and again in the future.
Contact numbers, text messages, phone calls, usernames, passwords, PIN codes, financial information, you name it, these apps can see, steal, and use it against you to do everything from closely monitoring all your online activity to draining your bank account to gaining total control and locking you out of your own Android device. Delete these hair-raising Android apps before they gain full control of your phone and money
The best ways to protect yourselves against these types of threats remain doing your own research into each and every new app you’re thinking of installing, vetting their user reviews, (advertised) purposes, the data they have (official) access to, and last but not least, the track record (or lack thereof) of their developers. It can also be helpful to ask yourself whether you really need that many apps on your phone whenever considering a new download.