Barcode scanner app on Google Play infects 10M users with one update
Even legitimate app developers have no incentive to keep their apps sterile. Someone just has to approach you with your 10+ million users barcode scanner app and offer you +50,000$ in order to install some automated ad clicker for them.<p>Don’t be naive, the majority will accept the money and gladly.<p>I believe that particularly makeshift applications such as e.g. barcode scanners are susceptible to this kind of overtake. Apps that offer what should have been offered by the OS vendor in the first place. Why should the app developer refuse the money if what their app offers will be incorporated in a next OS update by anyways? Why defend your mini-adapter-app in an ocean of mini-adapter-apps, with yours becoming so large just because of a random seed and path dependency?<p>This can have a big impact for end users. Imagine an authenticator app ending service to all their users in such a scheme and how you will be cut out from all your accounts by this. How many authenticator apps do you have to use in parallel to mitigate this risk of a single point of failure?