[promo title=]Android Police have revealed that a popular ‘anti-virus’ app on the Android Play Store is a scam.[/promo]
“Virus Shield”, an app which claimed it could prevent harmful apps being installed, scan your phone for problems in the background and protect private information – all without taxing the battery life – has been downloaded by thousands of people and given a collective rating of 4.5 stars. In spite of this, community users have determined that the only thing Virus Shield actually does is change an ‘X’ icon into a ‘tick’ icon, denoting the user’s supposed ‘safety’.
From this…
…to this! Feel protected now?
How much did the Virus Shield developer Deviant Solutions charge for this privilege? $3.99. Writing on the Android Police site, Michael Crider states:
“Let’s not mince words here. This is fraud, pure and simple, and the developer ‘Deviant Solutions’ potentially made considerable amounts of money based on a complete lie. […] Unfortunately the wide-open nature of the Play Store means that unscrupulous people can take advantage of it. We usually just post fake apps to the Android Police social accounts and our readers helpfully flag them, but this is such a brazen and expensive fake that we felt the need to give it some special attention. It’s somewhat disheartening that an app so obviously fake could rise to the top, especially considering that it’s paid, and possibly hundreds or thousands of people have been defrauded already.”
Virus Shield has since been taken down, but this affair brings into question the true nature of having an open submission process for public marketplaces. Quality assurance is an ongoing issue when it comes to apps and games, and it’s an inconvenient truth that QA and open marketplaces are finding it difficult to go hand-in-hand. The quest for a happy medium continues…