Online security experts have been a little circumspect on the security environment within the Android OS and Play Store setup. Many apps were found to be unauthorized or otherwise bearing risks. Now, in a test conducted by an independent organization, AV-Comparatives, it has been found that an overwhelming 68% of the apps offering antivirus protection, are in reality incapable of giving any protection. They are ineffective programmes to detect viruses or malware, the tests have revealed. AV-Comparatives chose 250 such apps for testing. This organization has taken it upon itself to undertake testing and evaluation of security software to know their efficacy in dealing with viruses.

The company goes on to claim that the remaining 80 which had some capability to detect viruses, don’t give too much comfort either. They found during the tests that the AV apps from the Play Store failed to pick out some of the latest viruses which have made their appearance in 2018. And more worryingly, some of the known and reliable programmes were being flagged, while ignoring some suspicious ones.

However, the very popular apps such as Trend Micro, AVG, Avast, Kaspersky and McAfee all fared well in the tests.

According to the team at AV-Comparatives, which did the tests, these antivirus apps found useless did not possess a scanning code. They appear to be some outdated programmes with a kind of ‘go’ ‘no-go’ lists built in which was used to detect files. No wonder they could not detect the latest viruses. It appears as if these are tailor-made AV suites for the hackers to perpetrate an attack since the tactics used by the hackers in naming their malicious files resembling the familiar ones to deceive the users would succeed if these apps were used on the systems.

Google should take note of these test results and remove all these apps with no use from the Play Store.