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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Amber Bouman

Over 200 malicious apps were downloaded more than 40 million times from the Google Play Store this year

Malware on phone .

You can never be too safe when installing a new app on one of the best Android phones as hackers and other cybercriminals continue to use malicious apps in their attacks.

According to a new report from the cloud security company ZScaler, there were more than 40 million downloads of malicious apps on the Google Play Store between June 2024 and May 2025. Though the majority of these apps are no longer available through the app store, the company found 239 applications that it was able to identify as malicious, up from 200 the previous year.

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