Google has made headlines in recent months, both here and elsewhere, for its crackdown on malicious apps in its proprietary app marketplace, as well as on apps that cross all kinds of lines regarding appropriate practices. Back towards the end of April, you may recall, it came to light that Google was moving to ban one of the biggest Android app developers (DO Global) from the Google Play Store after several of its apps were caught sharing data they collect with the Chinese government, among other concerns.
Unfortunately, we have to again report a similar turn of events. Researchers from the mobile security firm Lookout announced that 238 apps that had been downloaded in aggregate more than 440 million times from the Google Play Store were found to contain the BeiTaAd Plugin. That’s a strain of adware that can apparently render a mobile device almost unusable.
more here:
https://bgr.com/2019/06/04/google-play-store-apps-adware-android/