As many as 1.5 million Android users are having ads clicked for them in what appears to be shady practices by apps hosted on Google Play
Share to twitterLONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 09: In this photo illustration, A thumbprint is displayed on a mobile phone while the Google logo is displayed on a computer monitor on August 09, 2017 in London, England. Founded in 1995 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page,This time it's from cybersecurity giant Symantec, which said that as many as 1.5 million Android users are having ads clicked for them in what appears to be shady practices by apps hosted on Google Play.
Those apps are: Idea Note, a notepad app with more than 1 million downloads, and Beauty Fitness, a workout assistant with at least 500,000 downloads. They've now both been kicked out of the Play store - where they'd been hosted for a year - after Symantec warned Google of the rogue behavior. The developer of both apps, who goes by the name Idea Master, hadn't responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.In describing the novel,"cunning" attack, Symantec researchers May Ying Tee and Martin Zhang said that the advertisements were effectively"drawn" on the device but then removed from the view of the user.
"The position of the drawings are beyond the device’s viewable screen area and the user is unable to see the advertisements on their device. Using this tactic allows advertisements, and any other potentially malicious content, to be displayed freely. The app can then initiate an automated ad-clicking process that produces ad revenue," they wrote in aOutside of funding a potentially fraudulent scheme, any users of the apps may also have their battery drained by the hidden ad clicking.
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