

One in three Android apps on non-Google stores are malicious, study finds - tomashertus
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/18/one-in-three-android-apps-on-non-google-stores-are-malicious-study-finds

======
dlhavema
what kind of review process do these app stores have? i'm guessing the Amazon
store has some form of review, but how many of these others have anything in
place? this also sorta looks like a publicity piece for MetaScan...

~~~
mrsaint
My thoughts exactly. Sounds like a PR piece for Metascan.

\- "downloaded almost 12,000 apps" \- I know there are a lot of apps out
there, and a lot of crappy ones, but finding 12,000 apps to download from
"third party stores" not Google Play or Amazon... well, it's a lot indeed.

\- "which flagged 32% of the apps as suspicious" \- meaning what exactly? To
me any app that queries my phone ID looks suspicious. Most apps from Google
play do.

\- "the majority of the apps it highlighted were marked as malware" and "many
files were picked up because they had been classified as adware" \- they are
quite specific with the number of suspicious apps, but not very specific with
apps that are supposed to be malware. If they tested 12,000 apps, of which
3800 (~32%) were suspicious, then more than 1900 (>50%, the majority) of them
were supposedly malware. That's roughly 16%, which doesn't sound like a number
all that impressive anymore. Regarding the adware claim - well, a big
percentage of apps available on Google Play is adware. If that alone qualifies
for suspicious...

