Google purges battery-draining Android apps with 20 million downloads

Google Play has removed apps with more than 20 million downloads because they were using excessive mobile data and draining batteries, says a report.

According to a report by McAfee, it identified new Clicker malware that sneaked into Google Play. In total, 16 applications that were previously on Google Play have been confirmed to have the malicious payload with an assumed 20 million installations.

“Once the application is opened, it downloads its remote configuration by executing an HTTP request. After the configuration is downloaded, it registers the FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) listener to receive push messages,” McAfee wrote in a blogpost.