There have been may studies revealed as to how Google has removed various apps from the Play Store for Android users after finding malware, adware and some sort of a trojan inside these apps. Now, a new report has just been published which reveals that the Android Store also has some “creepware” apps inside them. And it is great to know that Google has also removed 813 of these apps for being creepy. Now, it is also interesting to find out what Google believes are creepware apps.
As per this report from a group of academics, they studied stalkerware-like apps. It is clear from this description that these apps might be involved in stalking or the tactic of following someone of the social media profiles and tracking their each and every move. This report has been published right now and is named as “The Many Kinds of Creepware Used for Interpersonal Attacks.” It also details that the research was carried out last year and we believe that all of these apps have been removed by the time you will read about them.
These academics revealed that they developed a creepware algorithm which would “identify apps with features that can be abused to extract SMS messages from a device, spoof another user’s identity in IM/SMS chats, launch denial-of-service attacks (SMS/IM bombs, etc.), hide other apps, control access to other apps, track location”.
Researchers say that when they ran their algorithm on the Top 1000 apps, it was found out based on their CreepRank score that 857 qualified as creepware. This means that more than 85% of the apps from the top-ranked apps qualify as creep apps meaning that they can be used to track people and stalk them if needed. They reveal that Google was informed about 1095 apps last summer and they removed 813 for violating the terms and conditions.