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A malicious app that bombards Androids with ads is using all sorts of trickery to boost its ratings. The app, dubbed Hiddad-BZ by security firm ESET, is available in the Google Play store where it poses as a tool to download content from YouTube. The app uses a number of deceptive methods to trick users into installing its …

  1. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Remember, don't use alternative app stores

    Stick with Google Play and their fantastic handwavery algorithms for a false sense of security. If you go to other app stores you could find something terrible like this:

    F-Droid

    NewPipe

    Lightweight YouTube frontend

    Lightweight YouTube frontend that's supposed to be used without the proprietary YouTube-API or any of Google's (proprietary) play-services. NewPipe only parses the YouTube website in order to gain the information it needs.

  2. Simon Harris

    "The app, dubbed Hiddad-BZ by security firm ESET, is available in the Google Play store"

    It might be useful if the article suggested what the name of the app was on the Google Play store, rather than just it's ESET code name, so we'd know what to avoid.

    1. Simon Harris
      Coat

      Re: "The app, dubbed Hiddad-BZ by security firm ESET, is available in the Google Play store"

      Damn... shocking apostrophe misuse there.

      Mine's the hair shirt ---------------->

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kill the app market, complain that app developers find other means of making money.

    It is foolish to think that anything other than a $100K budget is suitable for a mobile app.

    I certainly only suggest mobile apps as supporting to a web based app or desktop app. There is lots of hopes and dreams in mobile and lots of BS too.

    The main people who are looking to mobile developers these days are dreamers who have not even checked if their "amazing idea, that you need to sign an NDA for" is actually already about 15 apps.

    Do people still download from app stores? They were saturated about 3 years ago, there is 10 apps for any possible requirement i have. I install almost nothing and begrudge all the google crap i can't uninstall.

    It is fast getting to the point where i think that a jail broken phone managed by me is going to be more secure than anything google or their partners think is security. I already started re-writing the apps i like but screw you on security etc (like evernote... the open source alternative is quite interesting, evernote on my server with only people i approve using it... that is perfect right?).

    1. Andy Non Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Kill the app market, complain that app developers find other means of making money.

      I'm seriously thinking of going back to a feature phone to get away from all the crapware that Google keeps pushing onto my phone. If you try to remove unwanted Google apps, it either blocks you or warns you that your phone may stop working as a result. F**k you Google.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Kill the app market, complain that app developers find other means of making money.

        How do the unwanted apps harm you, other than taking up a little bit of storage?

        I don't want all the apps on my iPhone, but I just stick the ones I don't care about on the last screen. With iOS 10 I got the ability to remove the built in Apple apps I don't want, but I haven't bothered. Supposedly it doesn't completely remove them, it only removes their data and private libraries, but Apple says that all their built in apps combined require only 150MB so you wouldn't save much anyway.

        You save far more by deleting and reinstalling user data hogs like Facebook - it caches so much crap that after a few months it gets to around a gigabyte of user data and starts to slow down. Reinstalling it recovers ALL that wasted space. Facebook is far from the only third party app that wastes space caching data like that and presumably never clearing out old data, but most don't slow down the way Facebook does.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Kill the app market, complain that app developers find other means of making money.

          You save far more by deleting and reinstalling user data hogs like Facebook

          Or, if you don't really need it, just delete it.

        2. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: Kill the app market, complain that app developers find other means of making money.

          How do the unwanted apps harm you, other than taking up a little bit of storage?

          Run in the background and send data to the mothership.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Kill the app market, complain that app developers find other means of making money.

            Does Android run apps that you haven't run yourself? Yeah, I could see why that's worrying, but isn't the data collection built into Android itself?

  4. Terry 6 Silver badge

    The funny thing is

    When Microsoft were trying to sell their WinPhones the big complaint was, "But they haven't got the apps". And no one took any notice of those of us who just asked, "Who needs them?".

    Which apps were ever really worth having? Even if you reject the Winphone on principle ( in true Commentard fashion) the fact is that their lack of cr-apps was never the weakness that people made out. (Even if Microsoft were stupid not to use their muscle to make sure that they had a good range of the stuff).

    Oh, and check the permissions on some of these Android apps. Scary.

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