The publishers involved have not replied to requests for comment.
A spokesman for Google said: “We’re just confirming that all of the
apps in the report have been suspended and nothing more.”
Although Google Play’s own site indicated the software had been
downloaded many millions of times, one security researcher was
cautious about the figures.
“I would take the numbers with a pinch of salt because one thing
that malware authors might do is deliberately up the amount of
downloads in order to make an app appear more popular than it
really is,” said Dr Steven Murdoch from University College London’s
information security research group.
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