Google Play Store flags popular Chinese apps accused of planting malware in phones

Google on Monday announced that it had flagged several apps made by a Chinese e-commerce giant as malware, it also alerted users who had these apps installed, notifying them to delete.

Pinduoduo is a rising e-commerce giant in China that has almost 800 million active users. The app was flagged off after malware was found in some versions of the software that are not available on the Play Store any longer.

Google spokesperson, Ed Fernandez, said that “off-Play versions of this app that have been found to contain malware have been enforced on via Google Play Protect,” referring to apps that are not on Google Play.

News website TechCrunch recently reported that multiple Chinese security researchers had accused Pinduoduo of making apps for Android that contain malware designed to monitor users.

Google has set Google Play Protect, its Android security mechanism, to block users from installing these malicious apps, and warn those who have them already installed, prompting them to uninstall the apps, in an attempt to crack down on malware from such apps.

Interestingly, Google Play is not available in China, and according to TechCrunch, the malicious apps were present on the custom app stores of the phone manufacturers Samsung, Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi.

Meanwhile, in India, the tech giant has been under the CCI lens for a while now.

Google announced that it will allow app developers to offer an alternate billing system for in-app purchases within India starting April 26, 2023. This move complies with recent antitrust directives issued by the Competition Commission of India (CCI). As part of this new policy, app developers will be allowed to offer an additional billing system to users in addition to Google Play when purchasing in-app digital content.

Read: