The openness of Android is what many people love so much about the mobile OS – you can run your own code on it, customise it however you see fit, and generally tinker about much more so than you can with it’s competitors. The Android Market is open too – anybody can put an App on there and wait to start raking in the cash.
Unfortunately Google has fallen foul of its open-door policy a few times now, and today the search giant has announced the removal of 21 Apps from the Android Market that were masquerading as productivity Apps or games, when in fact they were attempting to crack open users handsets and gain access to the wealth of delicious personal information contained within.
The Apps, once installed, would root a users phone, collect up lots of sensitive data and whisk it away to god-knows-where, and for good measure open up a back door to leave your phone completely open for more downloads of naughty code in the future. The Apps were identified by the a Reddit user and subsequently brought to Google’s attention by the appropriately-named Android Police, and how now been dealt with.
This misadventure also highlights another reason why the Android Market isn’t raking in nearly as much cash as the iOS App Store – the ease of piracy. All of the dubious Apps were pirated versions of existing software, they had just been repackaged to include the exploitative code. A lot of criticism is levelled at Apple for their App Store submission policies, but you certainly wouldn’t ever see this happening on their watch.
Piracy and non-functional Apps has become such an issue on Android that Google announced not long ago is had an actual team of humans actively scouring the App Market looking for things to delete – why this specialist team didn’t identify these nefarious Apps before one random Reddit users remains a mystery.
For posterity, the Apps that have been removed were –
- Falling Down
- Super Guitar Solo
- Super History Eraser
- Photo Editor
- Super Ringtone Maker
- Super Sex Positions
- Hot Sexy Videos
- Chess
- 下坠滚球_Falldown
- Hilton Sex Sound
- Screaming Sexy Japanese Girls
- Falling Ball Dodge
- Scientific Calculator
- Dice Roller
- 躲避弹球
- Advanced Currency Converter
- APP Uninstaller
- 几何战机_PewPew
- Funny Paint
- Spider Man
- 蜘蛛侠
