Bitdefender researchers recently analyzed 25 apps that made it into Google Play, at least for a time, packing aggressive adware SDKs that bombarded users with ads and avoided removal by hiding their presence. Cumulatively, the apps were apparently downloaded almost 700,000 times by Google Play users.
While Google has gone to great lengths to ban malicious or potentially unwanted applications from the official Android app store, malware developers are nothing if not imaginative when coming up with new ideas to dodge Google Play Protect.