Google has removed eight apps from its Play Store

in hive-119463 •  3 years ago 

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Trend Micro has identified as fraudulent and designed to mislead consumers. The apps were designed to steal money from those who downloaded them by charging service fees and not mining coins. Trend Micro says there are still more than 120 similar apps on the Google Play Store and advises users to be careful.
The Trust Project is an international consortium of news organizations that sets a standard for transparency. Google's app store woke up a little lighter today after several fake cryptocurrency mining apps were removed from the platform.
A group of illicit apps were removed and banned from the Google Play Store after it was determined that they came from deceptive users. According to the security research firm Trend Micro, more than 120 similar apps are still available in the Google app store.
In total, Google identified eight apps as dangerous. Specifically, users were lured into investing in what they were told to be cloud mining services, according to Business Insider India.
Business Insider cites a report from Trend Micro that states: “Although these apps are not associated with cloud mining operations nor do they have any cryptocurrency mining functions, some of these apps ask users to pay for higher cryptocurrency mining capabilities through billing systems. Ranging from $ 14.99 to a maximum of almost $189.99 ”.

According to the Trend Micro study, apps that were banned worked the same way. Users were forced to watch video ads to allegedly mine cryptocurrencies and had to pay $ 15 a month for the service.
The apps also offered the ability to pay more to buy a cryptocurrency mining rig to earn more rewards.

The eight apps that Trend Micro discovered are:

  1. Bitfunds
  2. Bitcoin Miner
  3. Bitcoin (BTC)
  4. Crypto Holic
  5. Daily Bitcoin Rewards
  6. Bitcoin 2021
  7. MineBitPro
  8. Ethereum (ETH).

Trend Micro added that two of these apps, Crypto Holic and Daily Bitcoin Rewards, are paid apps that users must purchase. Other rogue apps still remain on Google. While the eight banned apps are a step in the right direction, the Trend Micro report reveals that they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Thus, if you search for “cloud mining” on Google Play, numerous similar applications will appear, some of which have been downloaded by more than 100,000 by unsuspecting users. Trend Micro says that more than 120 of these cryptocurrency mining apps are still available on the Play Store and elsewhere:
"These apps, which do not have cryptocurrency mining capabilities and mislead users into seeing ads in the app, have affected more than 4,500 users worldwide from July 2020 to July 2021."

Trend Micro shares some tips for consumers to recognize and avoid these rogue mining apps.

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  1. Reviews on the Google Play Store: "Fake apps will receive numerous 5-star reviews once they are published, but don't be fooled by them as they can be paid and fake reviews." It also says to pay attention to 1-star reviews as they are more likely to come from real users.
  2. Verify the validity of these apps is to enter an incorrect wallet address. Most malicious apps only process wallets as non-empty values. This means that the application accepts wallet addresses even if they are incorrect.
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