Reminder: Don’t Download Sketchy Apps On Your Phone

Oh, boy. It looks like Android users need to watch out for what they download. Shocker. Recently, an app showed up on the Play Store claiming that it’ll make your phone faster by defragmenting it.

This app, named “Android Defrag” was promptly removed from the Play Store, along with its $1 Pro version. The app basically says that it’s going to improve your phone’s performance speed, battery and memory. It also says that it’ll also do it in ONE TOUCH! That’s crazy! The PRO version would defragment your phone twice as fast.

Even better, this app has a five star rating. Obviously, these ratings were very fake, since there were 6 perfect ratings. We all know that there’s usually that ONE person who has an issue with an app. Statistics say that this isn’t probable.

First of all…there’s no need for this app. Your phones run on something called “flash memory”, which does not need to be defragmented. In fact, defragmenting your phone wouldn’t really benefit it in any way.

Second of all, don’t download these kinds of apps. Just be sure that you know what you’re downloading before you do so, and if you’re unsure about the legitimacy of an app, chances are that you probably shouldn’t download it. Another way to check to see if an app is legit or not is to read the permissions.

According to Android Police, the app wanted permission to check out your browser history, bookmarks and the ability to have network communication.

So, what have we learned today? Just because our smartphones do amazing tasks doesn’t mean that they need to be defragmented like computers. Don’t forget to ALWAYS read the permissions to an app before you download it, and check the ratings to see if anything fishy is going on.

Thanks to AndroidPolice for finding and reporting this app.