Google took stern action after a thorough investigation regarding ad fraud against some popular App Development Companies. Cheetah Mobile and Kika Tech are reportedly involved in this ad fraud after eight apps were found fraudulent. The most popular of the apps being CM File Manager and Kika Keyboard, which were observed to have been coded in an uncanny manner to execute ad fraud, have been removed from the Play Store.
The Ad Frauds are taken pretty seriously in the Google App Development arena. The App Development policies set by Google firmly prohibit malicious software or ad frauds of any manner. Google Play Download statistics show that CM File Manager has a tremendous popularity amongst Android users with Downloads standing at 50 Million and over a 100 million for CM File Manager and Kika Keyboard respectively.
Kika Tech authorities have stated in their press briefings and Twitter that they haven’t found any abnormalities or maliciousness in their applications. Although, they have reassured that an internal enquiry will take place to remove any residual ad error(if any) from their systems. They would also prevent any sort of ad frauds happening in future.
Cheetah Mobile has blamed the entire issue and fraudulent scheme upon a third party server error but questions arise on their server security too.
They have decided to appeal to Google to restore their applications on the Play Store but a question of trust and confidence would still be left to regain from their users after this fraud.
Click baits and injections are crippling internet security daily and are the latest cause for the lapse of secured servers throughout the globe. Errors in Softwares Development Kits (or SDK) are majorly responsible for these issues. Users must take precautions before using any apps or allowing external applications to gain control of personal user data. Use of Antivirus of Antimalware is highly necessary in order to maintain proper “cyber health” of each user.
Source – TheNextWeb