For a long time, the Play Store could be considered as the wild west of the app distribution, especially compared to Apple's inherently more restrictive App Store. Google, however, is working on improvements and is becoming more strict about the permissions of applications, among others. Nevertheless, we are back with another advertising fraud scheme even inside the store, in the wake of the survey conducted by Cheetah Mobile last year. Another Chinese application developer, DO Global, reportedly added code to its applications that automatically clicked on ads without users being aware of it.

BuzzFeed News first highlighted these results in collaboration with the Check Point and Method Media Intelligence security researchers. They discovered that the developer of the application in question was from the Chinese giant Baidu, become independent only last year. Its apps have generated more than 90 million downloads before Google deletes the ads.

DO Global products are not very accurate. They reproduce all the features of the system, like the camera and the flashlight, or promise to clean your phone to make it faster, which will often slow down the phones. But look for yourself, these are the six applications removed: Selfie camera, Total Cleaner, Smart Cooler, RAM Master, AIO flashlight and Omni Cleaner.

There are two parts to this fraud. First of all, DO Global was not listed as a developer for most of these applications, but used an American parent company for publication on the Play Store, which gave the impression to users that They were installing an American product. Of course, this is against the policy of Google. Secondly, apps have been programmed to automatically click on ads, stealing money from advertisers who do not get any real user interaction with their offers. As it happened in the background while the screen is off, users may also have seen their battery deteriorate and their data bills soak up.

BuzzFeed News also mentions that many apps on the Play Store abuse non-transparent permissions and privacy policies to suck users' personal data, but this does not point to specific applications or developers.

We can only hope that Google continues to take more control of the Play Store and manage to impose on the application developers the protection policies of its customers, which the company had already begun to do. by demanding higher target APIs and by more closely monitoring the phone and SMS permissions.