How can I get rid of unwanted apps that installed themselves?

[CyberDad111]

Cant get rid of unwanted apps that installed itself!

Recently a couple of unwanted porn apps / icons have appeared on my 7 year old daughter's tablet. I suspect it mustve been malware that installed itself? Anyway, I have been trying to uninstall them but no luck as there is no "uninstall" option for these unwanted apps, all it allows me to do is "Force stop" and "Disable" it. But that doesnt help it still launches. I've tried doing a factory reset, no luck. I also did a Safe Boot and tried to get rid of them in this mode but no option to uninstall them. Its really annoying.

Can anyone help me with advice on how to get rid of them? Or is there a way I can wipe the tablet clean completely?

 

[nahoku]

Re: Cant get rid of unwanted apps that installed itself!

A factory reset should have gotten rid of these apps... unless they belong to the OS. How did you do the reset... in settings, or through the recovery menu? It's very tough trying to guess what tablet you have so it would help immensely if you tell us what tablet it is and the full model number.

 

[CyberDad111]

Re: Cant get rid of unwanted apps that installed itself!

Hi nahoku. Thanks for the reply. I did a reset through the settings menu. Its a generic 7inch tablet called "Alldaymall" and the model A88S.

Is the reset through the recovery menu a better option?

 

[nahoku]

Re: Cant get rid of unwanted apps that installed itself!

Is the reset through the recovery menu a better option?

This is a yes and no question. In the old days, it might have been... nowadays, I can't tell. However, I always still recommend a factory reset in recovery. I'm from the old days so that's what I preach!

When you ran the reset from settings, did you have to go through the entire tablet setup again? Normally, a reset from the recovery menu will boot up to how you got the device out of the box where you have to go through the entire setup.

There's really not much on this tablet in terms of "official" recovery menu stuff. This is the only video I could find (I'm not even sure this is the same tablet, but google pulled it up).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Jvf96780U

If you have problems and you can't follow this video, I'll help you search more. However, it's past 2 am here in Hawaii, so I won't monitor this thread anymore tonight.

 

[CyberDad111]

Re: Cant get rid of unwanted apps that installed itself!

Ok I went into recovery mode and did a factory reset there. But its still the same, the same apps appear. Interestingly it doesnt take me through the tablet setup when I've done factory reset via the settings menu or when I do it via the recovery method. Strange. Its like these unwanted apps are somehow hidden in the system?

Would it get rid of them if I did a root?

 

[nahoku]

When you first bought the tablet, do you remember going through any system setup? Entering wifi, email, etc? The thing about Android is you can't write to the system unless you root... so these apps shouldn't be able to survive a factory reset. Do you have the names of these apps. Maybe we need to research them a bit.

 

[CyberDad111]

Yeah when we first got the tablet i had to fill in wifi details, email etc. I've circled the unwanted apps on the pic. But there is also ones that are in the background called "com.softwinner.videotest", "DragonFire-v2.3", "Dragonphone", "bcfservice", "Magic Cube", "P*rnclub", "com.service.usbmoniter".... these are all still there. Infact I uninstall the first 3 and theyre back again after a reset via the recovery menu!?

 

[CyberDad111]

tried to post a photo of my tablet screen with the apps circled but says my post need to be approved?

Anyway, I did some searches on the names of the porn apps and came accross this on the XDA forums:

"I asked our resident hacker to take a look at the code himself, and he’s verified it does indeed root the user’s device via rageagainstthecage or exploid. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: it does more than just yank IMEI and IMSI. There’s another APK hidden inside the code, and it steals nearly everything it can: product ID, model, partner (provider?), language, country, and userID. But that’s all child’s play; the true pièce de résistance is that it has the ability to download more code. In other words, there’s no way to know what the app does after it’s installed, and the possibilities are nearly endless"

So I think its becoming clear that these malicious apps have done the damage to my daughter's tablet and is stuck on it permanently! Really makes me angry!!

 

[CyberDad111]

I now tried to put in my email etc and wifi so that i can install an antivirus but its popping up all sorts of ads and apps that wants to install!!! Madness!!!

Also when I go into Settings > Security > Device Administrators... there are 2 of the porn apps listed !!?? But I cant delete them. Frustrating.

 

[nahoku]

See if you can boot to Safe mode and deactivate those Device Admins. As long as they are Admins, you can't uninstall the apps... if there's an uninstall in the first place. Also, download Malwarebytes from the playstore if don't mind risking a sign in. Or you can download it from APKPure... Malwarebytes... and sideload it. Whichever way you get it, update Malwarebytes and have it scan your phone. Have it fix whatever it finds. See if you can run Malwarebytes in Safe mode.

Also download and install Avira from playstore or APKPure.. Avira. Update and have it scan the device and fix whatever it finds. Also see if it'll scan in Safe mode.

You can check to see if the tablet is actually rooted by downloading Rootchecker from the playstore, or again from APKPure... Rootchecker.

To sideload apps, in case you don't know, just means to install a downloaded app from a flash drive. You will need to be able to connect the flash drive to your device with an OTG cable, or if you have a flash drive or card reader that connects straight to the device connector, you can use that.

Eventually, we want to be able to factory reset the device and totally wipe it.

I totally understand your anguish and frustration. I've been working on PC's for years and a lot of that time was getting rid of malware and virus' on friend's and family's computers.

 

[CyberDad111]

Hi nahoku. Sorry only coming back now, I was getting angry at the tablet and decided to leave it for a few days lol!

I'll try the above things and let you know how it went? Thank you for taking the time. !

 

[nkdas5544]

I am having same issues with my Android Marshallow phone. Time to throw Andriod to trash! They are unable to keep-up the sanity.

 

[belodion]

I am having same issues with my Android Marshallow phone. Time to throw Andriod to trash! They are unable to keep-up the sanity.

You describe your problem here: http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=716236

 

[mru007]

Scan the phone with Avast anti-virus (app available on Play Store).
But I would also recommend a Factory Reset (Hard Reset) via the Recovery menu.
Then perform a Wipe Cache Partition from the same menu.
This should get rid of the apps & also make the tablet like a newly purchased device

 

[Zyzigy]

It's been a while since anyone has posted in this thread. Apologies to moderators if it's too old to add to.
Here's something for the originator of this thread and anyone who finds it useful.

The last few months i've been wrestling with my Android 5.1.1 tablet to get it to stop automatically, without my permission, downloading garbage apps eg. 9apps, Internet Browser, DU Battery. No matter what AV or AM program I installed, none could find the nasty on my tablet. I installed Droidwall and limited it to allowing internet access to frequently used apps like Instagram, Facebook, Play Store etc. Found that the offending program would create a Download/.info/cache folder to download these garbage apps into but didn't have the ability to get by Droidwall and grab the nasty apps. After deleting the offenders folders only to have them recreated again upon restart, I found it was a running process called "softwinner.loggerservice.". It also did not allow uninstallation and re-enabled itself if disabled, after restart. I was lucky that I had used KingRoot to gain root access earlier on and root access, strangely, remained after a factory reset. I then installed Titanium Backup and used it to uninstall the "loggerservice" program.

All is going well so far with no unexpected apps being installed.
Hope this helps.

Cheers

 

[wbmiller3]

Zyzigy, thanks for your timely post. My wife was seeing apps installed on her tablet and I had tracked it down to the softwinner.loggerservice process - why was it running all the time, and with such broad permissions? I appreciate your posting which helped me confirm that this was indeed the culprit. Do you have the Azpen 746 tablet? That's where we found it.

 

[Zyzigy]

Hi wbmiller3. I have the Pendo Pad PNDP51M10BLK 10.1". Great tablet.
Good to know it was the same thing. I wasn't so sure because a few days after posting, another program automatically installed that bypassed Avira initially, but sent it crazy during a scan. Not the usual 9apps, DU Battery etc but called 'Search'. I also noticed regular pop ups leading to shopping and strange "Your phone has a virus" sites when opening the default browser and Firefox. After more research, reading many similar reports on other sites, that it could be an infected version of YouTube installed at the factory. I tried disabling it at first, but it kept popping up a "YouTube has stopped" alert repeatedly after a reboot that almost stopped me from using the tablet completely. I had to hit 'OK' then quickly tap 'settings > apps > disabled' between pop ups to re-enable it so the pop ups would stop. That sent up a red flag. I had to use Titanium again to uninstall YouTube because it was set up as an uninstallable system app. The browser pop ups have gone and now it's just a matter of waiting to see if this was also the cause of unwanted apps.
Stay tuned!

 

[Smith 001]

offending program would create a Download/.info/cache folder to download these garbage apps into but didn't have the ability to get by Droidwall and grab the nasty apps

I found several apks on the download folder and I just deleted them.(they can't install automatically)

 

[Zyzigy]

It's been 5 days since removing the pre-installed version of Youtube. Not a single pop-up in Firefox or the default browser and no unwanted apps being installed. I'd call that a win.

 

[truongtuphong]

Idk how to stop installing these kind of apps, but there are some other app that can stop pop up ads that contain unwanted content. You can search for it on google