“So many fake apps out there”

Trend Micro recently conducted a survey that shows that various app stores and forums are full of fake apps that pretend to be from another manufacturer. However, the fake apps that usually look like the originals contain malicious code that can steal your information.

The company looked at 50 of the most popular apps on Google Play and then searched for fake variants. According to Trend Micro, 77 percent of the most popular apps were found to have fake variants on Google Play.

– We have followed malicious apps for almost five years and can state that a fake app that pretends to be the real app has a greater chance of being installed by users, writes JD Sherry at Trend Micro.

Trend Micro’s survey conducted in April this year cataloged a total of 890,482 fake apps. More than half of these contained malicious code of which 59,185 contained aggressive ads and 394,263 were already malware.

The most common type of fake app pretends to be a security program. Something that is particularly serious as users think they are protected when instead they are directly exposed to a malicious app that also asks for full rights on the phone.

– A recent example of this is an app called Virus Shield that received a rating of 4.7 on Google Play and was downloaded over 10,000 times, writes Trend Micro in its report.

Trend Micro writes in its report that Google should be better at dealing with the problems that exist on Google Play.

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