A lot of third-party apps are relying on little banner ads that sit at the bottom of an app. Sometimes they also have five-second full-screen ads as well.
Usually, such ads are provided by Google or third-party services, and this pays them a small amount for displaying the advertisement and a more considerable one when users click on the ad.
The latest investigation finds six fraudulent apps
An investigation that has been conducted by Buzzfeed in collaboration with Check Point, Method Media Intelligence and ESET security firms found that there are six apps which have been published by DU Global and were clicking on in-app ads in order to generate revenue illegally and without the user’s knowledge.
TechSpot writes that all these apps have been periodically clicking on ads and opened them in the background whether the app was open or not.
This was obviously leading to draining the system’s resources, data, and battery life as well.
The online publication mentioned above writes that “Needless to say, if you’ve downloaded any of them: Selfie Camera, Total Cleaner, Smart Cooler, RAM Master, AIO Flashlight and Omni Cleaner – delete them now. Thankfully Google removed them from the Play Store as soon as they were alerted.”
Violating Google Play Store’s policies
“We explicitly prohibit ad fraud and service abuse on Google Play. Developers are required to disclose the collection of personal data, and only use permissions that are needed to deliver the features within the app,” Google told Buzzfeed.
The tech giant continued and said, “If an app violates our policies, we take action that can include banning a developer from being able to publish on Play.”
The online magazine concludes by saying that fraudulent apps are a terrible issue these days and just because an app is hosted by Google Play Store, this, unfortunately, does not mean that it’s completely trustworthy.
After finishing Theatrical Journalism at the Faculty of Theatre and Television in Cluj-Napoca, Rada reviewed movies, books, theatre pieces and she also wrote articles from the IT niche as a content editor for software producers. At the moment, she is working with various online advertising firms.
