Some Android GPS Apps Are Just Showing Ads on Top of Google Maps (zdnet.com)

A security researcher with antivirus maker ESET has discovered a collection of 19 Android apps that pose as GPS applications but which don't do anything but show ads on top of the legitimate Google Maps service. From a report: "They attract potential users with fake screenshots stolen from legitimate Navigation apps," said Lukas Stefanko, the ESET researcher who found them, who pointed out the 19 apps have been downloaded more than 50 million times. The apps "pretend to be full featured navigation apps, but all they can do is to create useless layer between User and Google Maps app," the researcher said. Stefanko says that the apps don't have any actual "navigation technology" and they only "misuse Google Maps."

Comments

Re:Google must give extensive oversight.

[ShanghaiBill]

It did that in the beginning.

Google never did a good job overseeing their app store. It has always been a malwarefest. If anything, it was even worse in the past.

My spouse has an app business, and I have helped her with releases. It is a real struggle to get an iOS app approved for Apple's app store. But for Google, you just shovel it in. I don't recall them ever rejecting anything, even when we had inadvertent bugs that made the app totally malfunction.

Re:What's an alternative to Google maps?

[Solandri]

The 'compass' to the right of the screen which you can tap for 'full overhead' or 'rear chase helicopter, video game style' camera has been very "cleverly" removed by yet another moron.

There's no simple way to have the map always face north when in navigation mode, there's no simple way to make the map always have the above view camera. It's just the behind view thing and the tracking seems suddenly worse to boot.

Chase camera mode (tilted mode) is now seamlessly integrated with top-down mode. You do a two-finger swipe up or down to tilt the map at any arbitrary angle from top-down view to fullly tilted (looks to be about 30 degrees). I never used chase camera mode, so was mildly annoyed when I first accidentally tilted the map. But it was easy enough to put it back into top-down mode.

The compass which used to always be present now disappears when you have the map aligned so North is up. If you rotate the map (two finger twist), the compass reappears. Tapping it when it appears re-aligns your map so North is up, like before (and makes the compass disappear). I consider this a useful change because back when the compass was always present, you couldn't be sure if the map was properly aligned so North was up if it was slightly rotated. The OCD part of me was always tapping the compass when it was already aligned so North was up.

On top of this, they finally added back the general "avoid tolls" option. This used to be a general option in the early 2010s. But then they moved it so it was only available when you made a navigation route; the problem being it didn't remember your setting on previous routes. So I was constantly getting routes on a nearby toll road unless I disabled toll routes every single time. They finally changed it back to a general setting a few updates ago.

Re:Google must give extensive oversight.

[fluffernutter]

"It is a real truggle to get an iOS app approved for Apple's app store." This should read, "Apple makes unreasonable demands on developers.". Recently they forced me to have a valid URL with a privacy statement for crying out loud. Android users always get the best and newest version of my app because I just don't have time to put up with Apple's BS every time.