The Google application, present on millions of devices around the world, is suddenly accused of malicious activities. Is it a simple error, a recognition error, or something more serious?
Huawei Mate 60 Pro // Source: Frandroid
If you have owned a Huawei, Honor or Vivo phone in the last few days, you may have had a fun surprise. A notification may have appeared on your screen informing you that the Google app is malware. More specifically, it would be a “Trojan horse”, a type of virus that can cause great damage, e.g. by sending SMS messages alone, stealing your personal information, or installing other apps without you noticing.
According to the warning, the Google app sends text messages without the user’s consent, steals personal data and silently installs other apps, among other things. “We recommend that you uninstall it immediately,” the message concludes.
Source: Stackdiary
As far as we know, this problem appeared after the last update of the Google application. Security tools on Huawei phones and some Vivo models reacted by classifying them as dangerous. And it seems that these are not just a few isolated cases: a lot of people are talking about it in the Google forums, on Huawei and on Reddit.
Source: Google Forums
False alarm, but we ask ourselves questions
Most experts say it’s probably a false alarm. Other security software hasn’t found any problem with the Google app, and it’s pretty hard to imagine that Google would let such a big virus get into one of its main apps.
However, we don’t really understand why neither Huawei, Vivo, nor Google have solved this problem yet, especially since the first reports from users who noticed the problem were several days ago. It appears that Huawei, Honor and Vivo mobile phones use the Avast virus detection engine to protect their users’ devices. However, a problem arose: the Avast engine misidentified Google applications and incorrectly marked them as Trojan horses.
While waiting for the official solution to the problem, users have found some tips to make these annoying notifications disappear. On Huawei smartphones, it would be enough to clear the data and cache of the Optimizer application and restart the phone. On a Vivo smartphone, you can try the same using the iManager app.
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