Our mobile security research team has found at least 33 applications that contain aggressive advertising components in the official Google PlayTM store.
The developers of these applications choose to imitate well-known companies like GoogleTM, MicrosoftTM, TwitterTM, AVGTM among others.
Here’s an example of some applications found in Google Play:
This developer is very creative – you can see the new icons he has created for AVG:
Below you can see another example of a fake AVG anti-virus app that can be found in Google Play:
Remember, if you want to pay for a PRO version of an app, you absolutely must make sure that it is the legitimate version of the app you’re looking for.
I would guess that it won’t be long until we see fake AVG 2014 applications following the AVG 2014 Launch last week.
When you install one of these fake applications, it requests the user to change configurations related to the search options:
After the user accepts the conditions, commericals for adult services are shown:
Later, the app itself offers none of the functionality advertised (such as antivirus protection).
This is a new advertising vector that takes advantage of people who might not be familiar with official company accounts. For example, when you look for AVG’s Android solutions on Google Play you might find apps that are not released by AVG (the official developer is AVG Mobile) but from opportunistic scammers:
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