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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for GrandFireWizard:

Google has reportedly removed more than 100 apps:

Google has reportedly removed more than 100 apps with tens of millions of downloads after allegations the apps were part of a co-ordinated group that may have violated store policies.

The group allegedly involves at least 27 separate app developers (that could also be pseudonyms), according to tech outlet CyberNews.

The outlet alleges the apps were made (and often ripped off from other developers, including some in the alleged network) to generate ad revenue.

Most of the apps are simple ones focusing on things like scanning PDFs and making photo collages, likely deliberately chosen because they provide sought after services people want quickly and are likely to download them without thinking too hard about it.

The research alleges the group's apps were downloaded 69 million times and could have been generating $US10,000 a month, or even up to $US1 million, though they say it's likely to be on the lower end of that spectrum.

But the apps don't appear to require much work to make and publish on the Google Play Store, which is what initially raised the suspicions of the researchers, after discovering links between different developers.

The app developers mostly have a first name-last name style developer name usually featuring Western-style names, which might seem like a tenuous link at first, but it goes deeper.

[...] The research doesn't conclusively reveal where the network is based, but all the evidence seems to point towards Asia, with Vietnamese postcodes on some developer pages, and references to Chinese telecoms in the code of some actual apps.

Original Submission