{"id":308737,"date":"2019-06-05T09:54:37","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T07:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=308737"},"modified":"2019-06-05T09:55:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T07:55:32","slug":"aggressive-adware-found-in-popular-android-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/308737-aggressive-adware-found-in-popular-android-apps.html","title":{"rendered":"Aggressive adware found in popular Android apps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.lookout.com\/beitaplugin-adware\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Lookout<\/strong><\/a> has found that BeiTaAd, a new type of adware, infected 238 Android apps with a combined 440 million installations on the Google Play Store.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The plugin forcibly displays ads on the user\u2019s lock screen, triggers video and audio advertisements even while the phone is asleep, and displays out-of-app ads that interfere with a user\u2019s interaction with other applications on their device,&#8221; said Lookout.<\/p>\n<p>According to Lookout, this adware also prevented some users from performing tasks as basic as answering a call. However, these issues did not show themselves immediately, instead starting to become visible after at least 24 hours of the app being installed.<\/p>\n<p>All apps that contained this adware were released on the Play store by the same publisher, CooTek, which is a Chinese mobile Internet company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most well-known app affected by BeiTaAd was TouchPal, a popular keyboard app.<\/p>\n<p>Lookout reported BeiTaAd to Google and it has since been removed from all affected apps on the Google Play Store.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/308593-us-visa-applicants-now-required-to-disclose-their-social-media-accounts.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">US visa applicants now required to disclose their social media accounts<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BeiTaAd, a new form of adware, has been found within 238 Android apps with a combined 440 million installations on the Google Play Store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341039,"featured_media":163498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[29076,10100,3316],"class_list":["post-308737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-adware","tag-google-play","tag-lookout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308743,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308737\/revisions\/308743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}