Are you one of those people who easily download and install free antivirus or cleaning apps in the PlayStore to boost your gaming experience, clean excess memory, and block prevent viruses? What if I told you that those you trusted so much are more dangerous than the actual virus itself? What would you feel? Disappointed? Well, absolutely yes! That's why it is very important to always remember that "trust should always be put in the right place" because we don't know who to trust anymore.
Last Tuesday, the Cybernews research team studied the top forty (40) antivirus and cleaning apps on PlayStore. The ranking was based on the counts of downloads or installations on the said platform. But the results are very shocking.
"Since these apps are closely related to security and privacy, we expected them to set the highest standard possible. However, this was not the case – as only two apps did not contain any trackers," the spokesperson for the Cybernews research team said.
According to the report, most of these 40 apps put millions of users at risk of being hacked. They also found out that 2 of these apps cannot be analyzed because of a possible obfuscation. Obfuscation is a method some developers employ to counter the reverse engineering process. The only problem is that the research team is unsure whether the developers used it to prevent intellectual property theft or conceal something malicious.
Besides these two (2) apps, the app that received last place is the Safe Security Antivirus booster and phone cleaner, which got 9 out of 100. Meanwhile, the first place goes to the Keep Clean Cleaner antivirus app with a score of 554 out of 100.
What's so alarming with these apps is that most of them consist of a data tracker, and 6 of them were detected with malicious links, including the Dr. Capsule Antivirus. The Cybernews research team reached out to Dr. Capsule about the result, and they replied that there was just confusion between the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. They claimed that it must be the case that the app was mistakenly flagged as potentially malicious.
At the end of the study, 13 of these apps scored the lowest possible grade due to the abovementioned issues. Nova Security got the highest data tracker count of all with a score of 30, along with the "Fancy Booster - Cleaner, Antivirus & Speed Up" and "Antivirus, Virus Cleaner, Booster - Fancy Security" with a score of 23.
When you are using your phone, and you suddenly feel like something is wrong with it, we often go to the PlayStore and install free antivirus or cleaning apps. We needed it, so we installed it without even researching if it was safe or not. Remember, most of us need such apps to clean junk files, boost the RAM, and even protect our devices from malware.
But now, let me ask you a question. What is the most important thing for you? Is it to boost your phone and experience better gaming or to protect yourself against the risk of being hacked? Choosing the right answer must be tough, considering that these top 40 free apps have cloaked up to more than 918 million downloads. And most of these popular apps had 1 million downloads each on the PlayStore itself.
It must be very hard to believe that these apps have data trackers or malicious links that we didn't expect. But it's the truth, and these kinds of studies are crucial for us to know what's hidden inside the shadows. I do not want to stop you from using free antivirus and cleaning apps because many people can't afford to pay for paid services. But you should remember that there's always a cost if something is free.
References:
Spadafora, A. (2022, May 4). These free antivirus apps may cause more damage than actual viruses. TechRadar. https://www.techradar.com/news/these-free-antivirus-apps-may-cause-more-damage-than-actual-viruses.
Black, D. (2022, May 3). Free cleaning apps put millions at risk of hacking. Cybernews. https://cybernews.com/security/free-cleaning-apps-put-millions-at-risk-of-hacking-says-research.
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