Android Users Beware! You Can Go Bankrupt With This App

Safety concerns always surround Google Play Store apps. The open-source platform is unable to control malware attacks letting the harmful apps to find a way onto users' smartphones. Regularly, Google keeps cleaning the platform by removing malicious apps, but the new ones keep adding up. The latest to join is a keyboard app called ai.type keyboard. can steal all your money! As per the researchers at mobile technology firm Upstream.

Researchers say it has been discovered that this application subscribes users to premium third-party services without notifying in the background. This means that the application has been conducting unauthorised transactions in the background and cheating people with money. Researchers claim to have identified 14 million requests of this type and have blocked with their Secure-D platform.

Interestingly, these requests come from only 110,000 devices that were under scrutiny. In June 2019, Google had removed the apps from its Play Store, but it continues to reach smartphones. The app is still available for download in various third-party app stores on Android and different other websites. So far, it has been installed on millions of devices.

The researchers claim that the app began to perform more malicious activities after being blocked by Google, and since then, there has been a massive increase in requests for malicious transactions. The app is also giving away user data, such as clicks on the website and purchase details to advertising networks.

Head of Secure-D at Upstream, Dimitris Maniatis, said, "Innocent users are paying for these hidden, unauthorised purchases and related data consumption whose source is buried in the app."

In case, you have this keyboard app installed on your device; it is best you delete it right away.