Google kills fake anti-virus app that hit No. 1 on Play charts "Virus Shield", an app that briefly shot to the top of the charts on Google Play, has turned out to be a complete fake and has therefore been pulled by Google. The scam, turned up by Android Police, is as simple as a con-man could wish for: the app includes almost no functionality whatever, yet it was briefly a chart-topper on …
I don't know if root cloak works with Sky GO, but you might want to investigate that. It sure does work with Belgacom's TV Partout.
I root all mine/family phones as soon as the battery is charged, to be able to install adaway, titanium backup, and cerberus/lookout. Also to be able to revert google's incredibly dumb decisions in Kitkat re external storage.
I got my silver badge because of my stunning repartee, amazing wit, and blackmailing one of the Journos here on Ell Reg*. Not because of any perceived technical competence.
How are you planning on getting yours?
*One or more of the preceding statements may be at variance with established facts.
"root your phone and installed AdAway"
If everyone did this then apps would no longer be free as the professional devs would not have any revenue stream. Sure we could just have part-time coders who wish to do a bit of philanthropy or open-source their wares but for a full time dev producing apps, they need either an ad supported model, or a pay for model.
If you don't want ads pay a few pence for an ad-free version. If you want it for free then just use the ad-enabled version.
"3) I assume every advert that appears on my phone that doesn't name the company to be fraudulent."
I take it a step further. I assume every ad is fraudulent. I've never clicked on an ad on purpose. I'm 26 years old. The whole ad industry should be afraid. Younger generations will be more like me.
/You're the 1 millionth visitor to view my post! Click here for your prize!
Looking at the comments above, it's clear that the curated App Store has it's detractors, but all the crapware we used to get on Windows has moved wholesale to Android, whereas iOS has barely any.
Whenever I've had Android phones it's always amazed me at all the garbage in the Play Store - anti-virus, task killers, speed-up utilities etc. Sure, it's freedom. But that only suits savvy users who know enough about their platform to know whether a given type of app makes sense.
The crapware was my biggest issue when I got my first Android.
Love Android, but the app choices are an absolute nightmare. The thing that saved me was not having enough memory to download anything not essential.
Then I unlocked it and then I rooted it and killed off the rest of the crapware.
Vulnerable? I don't play games, download apps and visit but a handful of the same websites.
There's a lot of apps explicitly for power users in the Google Play store. Most of what you're calling garbage there, is actually meant for the power user. Many of these apps aren't as important with a modern version of Android, but they still have their uses I like Advanced Task Manager https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arron.taskManager I can see how much battery an app or process is using, move an app to the SD card, kill the app (apps occasionally hang on Android), kill any or all background apps to save battery. All with a much better interface than stock 2.3 Android. Another good one was Battery Monitor Widget Pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ccc71.bmw.pro It gives you stats and graphs about your battery, shows you how long it will last for a given task, movies, games, music, and tells you how long it will take to charge the battery. It also warns you when the phone is getting to hot or the battery is to hot to charge. My Nexus One would regularly hit 120 F and quit charging the batter or even 140 F when gaming on an 80+ F day when I was living without air-conditioning. The solution was to take the case off, or maybe even the back battery cover while charging and gaming.
My favorite App you might look down on is "Fix Broken Power Button" which allows you to turn off your phone with a button on the screen if your power button is broken, which has happened to me.
My favorite App you might look down on is "Fix Broken Power Button" which allows you to turn off your phone with a button on the screen if your power button is broken, which has happened to me.
Perhaps a silly question but, how do you then turn the phone back on?
The app took care of that too it knew about the other hardware buttons on the phone. You had your choice of using the up volume key, the down volume key, or clicking the trackball among others depending on the model, to turn on the phone. I used a click of the trackball. Now, this wouldn't work to turn the phone on from being all the way off. For that it was necessary to plug in the phone to the charger remove, then replace the battery, and then phone would boot. The easiest way was to carry an external USB battery with you. After that initial boot you could put the phone to sleep with the on screen button equivalent to tapping the power button, or launch the app and shutdown or restart the phone as needed. No need to plugin and jumpstart the phone until the next time it was fully turned off.
This was for my Nexus One, which I bough on launch day and paid for Next Day Air without a second thought, when Google didn't deliver I bitched them out on the phone, got a refund for the shipping, and got my hotel in the next state to receive it. At the time I was going to be spending 60 hours in transit over a 3 week period. It was after all the first "superphone" 1GHZ processor 512MB ram and 800 x 480 AMOLED screen. It was an amazing phone. When the power button broke over a year and a half later I didn't have nearly the kind of money I had when I bought it and nearly despaired, then I stumbled on the way to power on the phone and looked for a way to turn it off and found that app. I loved that phone. I had three extra batteries for it, and an external battery charger. I did a calculation at one point and figured out that 92% of my life waking or sleeping involved that phone.
Before the Nexus One I used RAZR 2v8m for voice and light web-browsing and a Nintendo DS with the Opera web-browser loaded on an "M3 DS Simply" flash cart. Others were amused I used it for business but it was a very serviceable web-browser if the page didn't have excessive amounts of pictures or complexity. For example it could load TomsHardware.com fine, and image galleries up to 20 images or so, but would choke on an image gallery with 25.
The RAZR 2v8m is right next to the Nexus One for my favorite phone. Mainly for the crazy amount of capability it had for being a consumer phone. Launched October 15, 2007 it had dual 240 x 320 screens with a touch screen on the outside of the phone. It had EDGE, a web browser, GPS, 2GB internal flash, on device movie and audio player as well as streaming capabilities. Yes I was listening to radioparadise.com and watching Youtube on T-Mobile's $5.99 unlimited internet plan (When others paid $30-40 or more for capped data. There were months I used 15GB). It was fun to have a phone that made other people say how are you doing that. I even once had that happen with the manager of a T-mobile store.
...that are just as deceitful or outright pointless but don't get the press coverage? Still available.
In fact I'd bet Google know some are shit but still take their share of the dosh.
Literally the only reason this one got withdrawn is because it was highly rated and was publicised as being crapware.
after you bought it, it displayed a (very nice) ruby. Similar scam, different price point ;-)
Apple did pull it fairly quickly.
At the end of the day, buyer beware is a bit true. Especially with antiviruses - a functional (or malicious) antivirus needs to access pretty much anything on your machine and there have been incidents before with fake scanners (MacDefender on Macs, I bet tons on MS). In fact, I'd welcome an enhanced vetting process specifically for those types of apps.
Shush, you. Only Android has crapware. Oh, and viruses that can magically break out of the app sandbox on non-rooted devices. Somehow. I think. Maybe. Or not.
Apple is perfect. The iPhone is heavenly. Praise St Jobs. Amen.
Sent from my iPhone.
Apple only pulled "I Am Rich" when two of its eight customers complained that they'd installed it in error. [ L.A. Times report here : http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/08/iphone-i-am-ric.html ]
The app's description was very clear: It said that it did nothing, and the sole purpose was to show your friends* that you're the sort of person who's so rich they can throw a thousand bucks away like that. As such, it didn't violate the App Store rules. (Had it dared to show a woman's nipples, or two men holding hands in a loving relationship, we'd have been spared such a scam, but no, the author chose a picture of a ruby, so that was okay).
* yeah, if you're the sort of person who throws a thousand bucks away to show off, those people who hang around you are definitely your friends.
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