If You Have These 17 Apps on Your Apple iPhone, Delete Them Now

The scourge of malware just seems unescapable. We have documented Google’s constant battles with malware that comes attached with Android apps and ends up in unsuspecting users’ phones. This time around, it is the turn of the Apple iPhone users to be a bit more worried about apps on their iPhone. Mobile security company Wandera had released a list of 17 apps for iOS which are infected with what they call the clicker trojan malware. This malware, like most others is designed to work in the background. It will open web pages, click on advertisements on these web pages and generate revenue for someone who clearly is getting benefited by all this. And these actions happen on your phone without your knowledge. At the time of writing this, Apple has taken down all 17 apps and they are no longer available for download on the App Store.

The 17 apps that you need to immediately uninstall from your iPhone are RTO Vehicle Information, EMI Calculator & Loan Planner, File Manager – Documents, Smart GPS Speedometer, CrickOne – Live Cricket Scores, Daily Fitness – Yoga Poses, FM Radio – Internet Radio, My Train Info – IRCTC & PNR (not listed under developer profile), Around Me Place Finder, Easy Contacts Backup Manager, Ramadan Times 2019, Restaurant Finder – Find Food, BMI Calculator – BMR Calc, Dual Accounts, Video Editor – Mute Video, Islamic World – Qibla and Smart Video Compressor. All of these 17 infected apps are published on the Apple App Store by the same developer, the India-based AppAspect Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

“Clicker Trojan is a well-understood class of malware that performs ad-fraud by making frequent connections to ad networks or websites in order to artificially inflate visitor counts or to generate revenue on a pay-per-click basis,” says Wandera.

Wandera also points out that AppAspect Technologies also has a developer profile on the Google Play Store with 28 published apps at this time. In the past, AppAspect’s Android apps have been found to have been infected and subsequently removed from the Play Store. However, the security firm clarifies that it is not clear whether the bad code was added intentionally or unintentionally by the developer.