Google suspends Chinese shopping app Pinduoduo due to malware issues

Google has suspended Pinduoduo, a popular Chinese budget shopping app, from its Play Store after finding malware in versions of the app

PGurus Newsdesk

March 21, 2023

Google has suspended Pinduoduo, a popular Chinese budget shopping app, from its Play Store after finding malware in versions of the app

Google flags apps made by popular Chinese e-commerce giant as malware

Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended the Play version of PDD Holdings Inc’s Pinduoduo app after discovering malware issues on the Chinese e-commerce platform. The move comes as the US government is ramping up its cybersecurity defences against increasing hacking and digital crimes targeting the country.

In recent weeks, several Chinese security researchers have accused Pinduoduo, a rising e-commerce giant with nearly 800 million active users, of developing Android apps that contain malware designed to monitor users, reports TechCrunch.

“Off-Play versions of this app that have been found to contain malware have been enforced on via Google Play Protect, Ed Fernandez, a Google spokesperson, was quoted as saying. He also stated that Google has suspended Pinduoduo’s official app on the Play Store “for security concerns while we continue our investigation“.

Effectively, the tech giant has set Google Play Protect, it’s Android security mechanism, to prevent users from installing these malicious apps and warn those already installed, prompting them to uninstall them.

The report said that an anonymous security researcher had alerted of the claims against the apps and stated that they analyzed the apps as well, discovering that the apps were exploiting several zero-day vulnerabilities to hack their users.

It is worth noting that Google Play is not available in China. As per anonymous security researchers, these malicious applications were found in the app stores of various mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi.

[With Inputs from IANS]

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