But this “freedom” comes with a price. If you aren’t careful,
you are allowing yourself to be open to risks. In case you download a
pirated app from a shady website, you shouldn’t be surprised if it brings
malware onto your system. The very fact that an app isn’t available on the Play
Store is a warning sign and you shouldn’t install the app unless you have good
reason to do so. If you do install an app from outside the Play Store, be sure
to allow your device to scan it for malware when you’re prompted. Leave the
Verify apps setting enabled to have Android perform regular scans for malicious
apps. If Android warns you about an app, uninstall it.
Then there are some apps that seem safe but request too many
permissions. Bizarre permissions. For instance, why would a simple flash light
app require access to my gallery, address book, and location? We have had
applications asking for multifarious permissions and we just blindly give it to
them. But just pause to think that these apps could upload the contents of your
address book along with your location to an advertising network’s servers.
Similarly, if an app requests the ability to send SMS messages the app may try
to send SMS messages to premium -rate numbers and run up charges on your cell
phone bill. And we are not kidding!
Permissions are a serious problem in the
Android ecosystem. As apps often request too many and there’s no easy way to
disallow them without rooting your device, as there is on Apple’s iOS.
It’s important to evaluate
whether an app is trustworthy before you give it access to your system. On
Android, this means looking at the number of times an app has been installed
and checking out its reviews. On the other hand, if an app has
four-to-five-star reviews and has been installed by more than a million people,
that app is much more likely to be trustworthy. Of course, this isn’t always
true — some bad apps manage to trick a large number of people into installing
them and reviewing them well.
The reputation of the developer also
matters. An app made by Google is probably safer than an app made by some
person you’ve never heard of. An app created by an organization you’re familiar
with — your bank, for example — is probably more trustworthy than an
organization you’ve never heard of.
Cutting to the chase, here are some
of the top apps that can harm your smartphone.
10 Apps That Can Damage
Your Smartphone.
1.
QuickPic
This app used to be a friendly and easy-to-use
photo gallery. It was never flashy, but clear communications and frequent
updates saw it steadily grow a well-sized user base. However, it was bought by
Cheetah Mobile and the company immediately started uploading users’ data to
their own servers. The result, ad filled painfully slow application.
2.
ES File Explorer
This was a pretty good file explorer and was quite
famous too. But the free version has been pumped full of bloatware and ad-ware.
Moreover, it endlessly nags you to download additional apps via
non-disable-able notification bar pop-ups. As an alternative, you could always
go for OI File manager or FX File Explorer. If customization is your thing,
then, by all means, go for Total Commander.
3.
UC Browser
This one is kind of a shocker. UC Browser is the
most popular Android web browser in China and India. It claims to have a “fast
mode” that’ll save you MBs of data usage thanks to compression. So then why is
it bad? Tracking.
The app sends Users’ search queries without
encryption to Yahoo India and Google. A user’s IMSI number, IMEI number,
Android ID, and Wi-Fi MAC address are sent without encryption to Umeng (an
Alibaba analytics tool), and users’ geolocation data (including
longitude/latitude and street name) is transmitted without encryption to AMAP
(an Alibaba mapping tool).
As an alternative, one could go for Chrome and
Firefox. But privacy concerns will still pertain. A solid all-around
privacy protector is Lightning.
4.
CLEAN It
A “junk file cleaner” that’s been installed 10
million times and has 85 percent four- or five-star reviews. Should be safe
right? NOPE. Most of what it advertises is detrimental to your phone. For
example, clearing the cache will ultimately slow your phone down when it needs
to be rebuilt, clearing your RAM only leads to more battery usage,
and killing running apps does not save your battery as claimed.
Greenify is a much better option for reducing apps’ battery drain.
5.
Music Player
Does what it says; Plays Music. But has lots of ads
and more worryingly from a user standpoint, it eats through data plans and
destroys your battery. People who’ve commented on its Google Play listing
report gigabytes of data being consumed, as well as massive battery
drain.
6.
DU Battery Saver and Fast Charge
Another “battery-saving” app with an
insane number of downloads. It has 7.6 million five-star reviews. 7.6 million 5
star FAKE reviews! why? An app does not have the ability to
change how fast your device charges. This is also the king of adverts – it
sponsors almost every ad that you see in any other app and manifests its own
ads on your lock screen and notifications bar. Also, all those fancy speed
graphs and cool animations? Totally fake. What to use instead? Good old Greenify.
7.
Dolphin Web Browser
An ad-free, Flash-supporting, HTML 5 video-enabled
browser. Dolphin Web Browser got 150 million downloads and counting. So then
why is not a favourite? Like UC Browser, this is a tracking nightmare. Worst of
all, it saves your incognito mode website visits in a file on your phone – go
and check. Don’t believe the hype; delete it now.
8.
Photo Collage
A collage creator that boasts 120 different frames,
addable text, and fun backgrounds. Cool right? Not quite because it boasts of
lots and lots of ads as well. Most annoying is the DU Quick Charge ad on the
Lock Screen. Crazy about collages? There are plenty of photo editors out
there. Photoshop is great for heavy-duty work, or you could also try
Google’s increasingly-impressive Snapseed.
9.
Clean Master
Another insanely popular “speed booster, battery
saver, and phone optimizer”, Clean Master has 600 million users and 26 million
five-star reviews. Yours truly was once a victim of this app and boy was I
frustrated! There are a horde of things that is wrong with this app. Firstly,
it’s made by Cheetah Mobile. And Cheetah Mobile is famous for packing ads,
bloatware, and nag screens into their apps. Secondly, it doesn’t do anything
useful. RAM-saving apps were valuable once upon a time, but the Android system
has developed so much that they are merely a hindrance. Android now has
its own native handler for assigning RAM and ensuring it’s all being used in
the most optimal way – in many cases, it even deliberately keeps RAM loaded to
help performance.
10.
Almost every Anti-Virus App
They aren’t bad per se, but they are largely
unnecessary – that’s why the biggest names in the industry now market their
apps’ anti-virus capabilities as part of a larger security package. There are a
couple of caveats, however; if you install software from third-party
sources (i.e., not the Google Play Store), or if you have a rooted
device. Both these situations can open you up to malware that Google has no
control over.
So what should you use instead? In this case, it’s
not so much what you should install instead, but rather that you need
to make sure you’re installing a full-fledged security package from a
recognized provider. The apps from companies like Avast and Avira tend
to offer additional features such as password-locked apps, remote device
wiping, and call blockers.
So there you have it, the top 10
harmful apps that you should safeguard you precious smart phone from.
While you stay tuned to AcadGild for
more interesting blogs, check out our Android course.
Who knows, maybe you can be the next app-genius!
If you have an idea for an app
brewing in that techie brain of yours, don’t wait dear geek, enroll now and be
famous!
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