Uninstall these Android apps now - or face the biggest phone bill

                                                                   credit:john gunn

Android users have been urged to check their security settings after many popular apps find that they are receiving huge debts on the victims' devices.

Security company Pradeo has found that many apps boasting hundreds of thousands of downloads are actually called "flecewareware", meaning that unsuspecting users were stuck signing up for premium-rate services that left them with huge additional costs.

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The apps were infected with a malicious bot known as the Joker, which was kept secret by developers and unsuspecting victims.

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Android Joker

In total, Pradeo has acquired six Joker-infected applications, including about 200,000, Joker-infected installations, including security applications, scanners, SMS services, wallpapers and gaming platforms.

One of the applications, Convenient Scanner 2, has more than 100,000 instances, which means thousands of users could be caught by the scam.

"Joker is a malicious bot (classified as Fleeceware) which is a key to mimicking clicks and preventing SMS from subscribing to unwanted premium services unknown to users," Prado's Roxanne Suau wrote on the blog. "By using as little code as possible and hiding it well, Joker creates a very powerful track that can be difficult to find."

Pradeo notes that all infected apps have now been removed from Google Play, but will remain installed on the devices of anyone who downloaded them from the app store.

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The company is now urging users to remove any affected applications from their devices immediately.

The news comes just after a separate report said many Android phones could store 'non-removable' files and apps following numerous widespread attacks.

Data from Kaspersky found that many Android devices that had been hacked by cybercrime could still contain files or dangerous objects without the user's knowledge.

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