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The dan­gers of unof­fi­cial app stores

Installing an app from any other than the offi­cial app store for your respec­tive mobile device is risky - as a cur­rent study has shown.

Most mobile apps are down­loaded from the offi­cial man­u­fac­turer store, i.e. the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Yet not all apps are avail­able from the orig­inal store for your respec­tive mobile device, since before pub­lishing any apps, device man­u­fac­turers check whether they comply with cer­tain quality and secu­rity criteria.

Some users there­fore like to buy from third party app stores to obtain items not offi­cially autho­rised, such as spe­cial games. Just how risky this is, has been shown by a study under­taken by the “RiskIQ” secu­rity com­pany. Stores such as “9Game.com”, “Fer­alapps”, “Vmal­lapps”, “Xiaomi” and “Zhushou” offer a high per­centage of harmful apps. With some 61,700 mali­cious apps, the “9Game.com” Android portal has been iden­ti­fied as the store offering most infected items.

If you use any unof­fi­cial stores, you run the risk of down­loading some kind of mal­ware to your mobile device sooner or later - for instance banking Tro­jans which will cap­ture access data or manip­u­late pay­ments without you noticing. Pro­tect your smart­phone or tablet by only ever installing apps from offi­cial stores!

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