Google Said These Samsung Apps Has Harmful, Asked Users To Delete Them – News18

Google continues to face the challenge of removing harmful apps but recently the company flagged normal apps as harmful, accusing them of spying on users through their phone. Google has its Play Protect feature which warns about potential dangerous apps, and as per recent reports, the company marked two Samsung apps as harmful, even though they weren’t.

The apps in question are Samsung Wallet and Samsung Messages that were notified to the users after the Play Protect scanning, calling it a risk for your device. The apps were scanned and users saw an alert which explained that they can try to spy on your personal data, such as messages, photos, audio files or even call history.

These are serious infringements of the Google Play Store rules, and understandably, the Play Store termed these two apps as harmful but was that really necessary? After all, Samsung Wallet and Messages apps are used by millions and available on Samsung phones as well.

So, unless Google spotted a fake version of these apps, the alert was a clear mistake and the company needs to answer why it did flag them as harmful for devices.

Reports claim that Samsung was informed by Google about a server failure which caused the issue, and both the companies even talked about how to fix the issue caused by the bug. Google has a clear control on how it lets each app run on Android phones. Its monopoly with the Play Store doesn’t help matters either and there’s a reason why the company is repeatedly questioned by antitrust authorities about how it handles third-party apps.

In fact, Google recently announced that it will start scanning for sideloaded apps on Android phones, which means, further scrutiny on apps that have the right to be installed but Google will employ its regulations and decide whether an app is safe enough to run on your device.