Malicious apps Play Store reach 300 collective installs

Despite Google’s best efforts, malicious apps continue to run riot on the Play Store. The more apps are taken down, the more new apps with malware show up. ESET security researcher Lukas Stefanko threw light on an analysis that shows that 172 dangerously harmful apps were found on the Store, and they collectively had over 335 million installs.

Be it the rise of malicious apps, or the recent trend of researchers calling out these apps, or both, but it is the Play Store’s reputation that is taking a hit as more and more people grow insecure of what is safe and what is not on the shelves of Google’s app market.

While the Play Store continues to launch countermeasures to stop such apps from getting to the play store, and as the brand continues to hunt down existing malicious apps, it is usually down to the end-user to ensure the safety of their phone. A few practices to include to ensure a malware-free phone would be to install only apps that you need, get apps only from trusted sources and be careful while browsing on the web and coming across ads.