Android Apps That Promise To Clean And Speed Up Your Phone Is Probably A Scam

Android phone owners should beware of downloading apps that promise to clean and speed up your phone.  Most likely, that free cleaning app is nothing but malware, which will further slow your phone down and feed your false information. Security researchers from Trend Micro recently called out a number of Android apps, with more than 470,000 total downloads combined, for being bogus system-cleaning utilities that actually had the potential to install more than 3,000 other malware apps on a user's device. Apps like "Shoot clean," "Super Clean" and Super Clean Lite," " Rocket Cleaner," " Speed Clean" and "Link World VPN" can download what are called "payloads," which can post fake reviews unbeknownst to the user.  Worse is these apps could also log into these other apps using your Facebook or Google credentials to help perpetuate advertising fraud. The good news is that you don't need a program to clean your phone. All you need to do it backup your photos and videos to the cloud, factory reset your device, and set it up from scratch again. Odds are good your device will still feel slow, since newer apps and operating system updates might have more demanding requirements than when you first purchased your smartphone, but you might at least be able to clear up some system resources by mass-clearing out any background apps you forgot about. And if your phone was nearly maxed out with data, clearing up some space might make Android feel a little faster.