“We recommend that you uninstall Google immediately”

Google’s app, which is on millions of devices around the world, has suddenly been accused of malicious activities. Is it a simple mistake, a detection error or something more serious?

In recent days, if you have a Huawei, Honor or Vivo phone, you may have had a funny surprise. A notification may have appeared on your screen telling you that the Google app is malware, also known as malware. More precisely, it may be a “Trojan horse”, a type of virus that can do a lot of damage, such as sending SMS messages on its own, stealing your personal information or installing other applications without your knowledge.

According to the warning, the Google app, among other things, sends text messages without user consent, steals personal information, and silently installs other apps. “ We recommend that you uninstall it immediately », concludes the letter.

From what we know, this problem started after the latest update to the Google application. The security tools on Huawei phones and some Vivo models have been rated as dangerous. It seems that these are not just a few isolated cases: many people are talking about them Google Forumson Huawei and on Reddit.

False alarm, but we ask ourselves questions

Most experts think it’s probably a false alarm. Other security software had no problem with Google’s app, and it’s very hard to imagine that Google would have allowed such a massive virus to slip into one of its flagship apps.

However, we don’t really understand why neither Huawei, Vivo, nor Google have been able to fix this issue yet, especially since the first messages from users who noticed the issue date back several days ago. Mobile phones from Huawei, Honor, and Vivo appear to be using the Avast virus detection engine to secure their users’ devices. However, there was a problem: Avast’s engine misrecognized Google applications, incorrectly flagging them as Trojans.

While waiting for the issue to be officially resolved, users have found some tips to hide these annoying notifications. On Huawei smartphones, it is enough to clear the data and cache of the Optimizer application and reboot the phone. On your Vivo smartphone, you can try doing the same using the iManager app.