Recently Google removed 85 adware-ridden android apps from the Google PlayStore. All these apps had more than 8M downloads. The banned app was mostly games or photography apps.
Adware apps focus on flashing full-screen ads on your smartphone. Mostly, they will keep on running in the background & generating the ad revenue for profit. They are also difficult to eliminate since such apps hide after installation. The Adware found on these apps was “AndroidOS_Hidenad.HRXH” which was good enough to flash ads and earn money from it.
The researchers at TrendMicro discovered that the misleading apps would remain inactive for at least 30 minutes after the installation. After that, the apps would automatically hide its icon and replace it with a shortcut on the home screen. Hence, the app would remain on the device even if the user decides to uninstall it via the drag and drop process.
However, the team believes users running Android 8.0 and above might be unaffected. This is because newer Android versions take user’s consent before an app tries to add a shortcut; thus, making users suspicious about the app’s activity.
What you all people can do is to check user reviews & ratings for this kind of apps. Try to minimize the installation of apps from unknown sources. And all this will save you from future problems. If you still find any difficulty in deleting these apps then you can go to Android Settings then head to apps and delete that app from there.
