How To Check If An Android App Is Safe to Download
There are various ways of finding out if an app is safe to download or not. While Google’s Play Store is one of the best places for downloading safe apps, but there are some harmful mobile apps, which can tamper and corrupt your system, if downloaded. So how does one know if the mobile app they have downloaded is safe or not?
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The Checklist: How to Check if an Android App Is Safe to Download
Although Google is adept at improving its digital security and user system safety every year, yet malware and related malicious apps still find their way into people’s phones. We listed some ways to ensure that the app you downloaded is safe for download and can be used.
Always Start with App Reviews
One of the basic places to find out if an android app is safe or not is to read the reviews. The reviews under an app are the best place to find out if an app can be downloaded or not. Hackers and malicious developers plant fake positive reviews, such as a 5-star review in the review section of an app. Most of the time, these 5-star reviews are boosted, so the user has to learn to differentiate the fake comments from the real ones.
Do the Reviews Specify Any One Quality or Feature for Generating the Comment in the First Place?
So beware of these dodgy reviews. However, there are some sincere comments posted as well, which have benefitted users, hence the need to look out for them. If a lot of comments look similar and say the same thing without specifying any quality or attribute or feature, then it’s probably copy-pasted or composed by a bot to generate a large number of reviews.
Finally, a quality that might make a review an exception, is when a developer has replied to the customer since a scammer wouldn’t write a genuinely annoyed review nor would they compose a sincere compliment for the app. That’s when you know that an app is legit and safe to use.
Always Read App Description in the about Us Section
Irrespective of where you download your app form, whether it’s Google Playstore or Apple Store, one should always read the description provided by the developer carefully. Since a developer’s job is to ensure that the app you downloaded is safe for your system if the description has a couple of spelling and grammatical errors, do not be turned off by them nor be alarmed by them. A developer’s job is to make sure that the app you downloaded works perfectly in all kinds of systems, under all circumstances.
Are You Reading an Apt Description of the App or Just Another Bunch of Keywords Put Together?
And that’s where you may catch a true scammer. A fake app will have a description, where the app description box be stuffed with a bunch of keywords. While a description composed by the developer’s team will always know which keyword to insert, which one to omit, and the frequency of the keyword(s). If you find yourself reading a checklist instead of naturally sounding information, then you probably need to re-evaluate your reasons as to why you are downloading the app in the first place.
Enthusiastic App Descriptions That Are Generic and Spammy
Another thing that you should beware of is enthusiastically-sounding descriptions which are full of adjectives and adverbs, sound more spammy than sincere. They can be called generic since they generalize the app description rather than describe the specific features which make the app something to look forward to! To a practiced eye, these broad promises will easily be caught as one knows that these cant solve all your problems.
A Safe App Doesn’t Sell You the Benefits of In-App Purchases
This one is definitely a killer! Before downloading an app, do check if in-app purchases are involved. If there are, then the user would be bombarded with details and the various benefits that your payment can get you. If the description is elusive, talks in circles, and doesn’t describe the various advantages of the app, then that’s a red flag.
The Bottom Line…
While these are some basic areas of concern that you should be aware of before you download any app, it is better to be safe than sorry and so you must keep these pointers in check. Safe downloads always start from a safe internet connection, so even if you have downloaded an app that checked all the right boxes but you were unable to run because your anti-virus alerted you, then you need to get your ISP checked as most service providers are quite nit-picky about online security.
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