Harmful Android apps racked up a scary number of Google Play downloads just last month

In the last couple of weeks alone, two different reports have made headlines, revealing the names of two shockingly popular ad-bombarding apps recently removed from Google Play, as well as detailing the scary tactics employed by another 15 titles to "fleece" unsuspecting "subscribers." Unfortunately (as well as unsurprisingly), you could hardly describe those incidents as isolated, at least based on a chilling stat put together by ESET malware researcher Lukas Stefanko (via Threat Post).

As usual, while it's absolutely fair to point the finger at Google for not being able to protect the Play Store and Android users better, some of the blame for that insanely high number of malware downloads also rests with the users themselves. Most of these apps can easily be identified by their low average rating scores, not to mention the actual content of some of their reviews, where their malicious angle is often reported by the first batches of victims.
Meanwhile, the banking trojan, stalkware, fake antivirus, and fake cryptocurrency exchanges categories "scored" a spot in the September 2019 malware chart with only one app of each type discovered, which is still one too many.