Google has recently noticed that some apps on Playstore are misusing the Ads and reaping fake clicks to generate easy money. These apps had were found guilty of drawing ad clicks even when the apps were closed and running in the background, which dained more battery and internet data consumption. Google has recently removed six apps including Selfie Camera, which was one of the most downloaded apps in PlayStore.
These famous apps that were recently removed belong to popular Chinese developer DU Groups. If anything to go by BuzzFeed reports, the fraudulent DU Group apps were identified following a list of almost 5,000 famous mobile apps was collected from Google Play, and their information like developer name and number of installs was collated.
After the report was out, Google found that these apps ask for unnecessary permissions and commit ad frauds using these extra permissions. DU Group is a Chinese app developing company that was spun off from mega search giant Baidu and claims to have 1 billion users worldwide.
The app is said to be part of a family of the TV remote control apps from the company, all covered by a single privacy policy that says
the app collects detailed information about the ‘content you consume (validated by audio content recognition).’ This suggests the app accesses the microphone to record audio while you use it. It also collects information on your location, IP address, device, and behaviour when you use the app.
Reacting to the report, Peel said its apps do not perform audio content recognition, though the report notes Peel
did not respond to a follow-up question about why that feature is cited in its privacy policy. It also said it only shares ‘Non-Personally Identifiable Location data for a fraction of our users’ with third parties.
Let us know if you are facing any app issue and fake ads clicks are done on your apps.