Google, in a bid to keep its play store clean, recently removed 22 Apps which showed malicious behaviour. According to Ars Technica, these apps were downloaded over two million times.

The 22 apps included Sparkle Flashlight, a flashlight app that was downloaded close to a million times after it was made available a year ago. These apps included "device-draining backdoor" from the beginning that helped them to download files from a server that was controlled by an attacker, without any knowledge of the user.

All the 22 malicious apps were removed from Google in the last few days of November. These apps apparently clicked on fraudulent ads without the knowledge of the user were active even after force closed.

In a statement, Google said it takes "Deceptive and malicious behaviour" on the platform very seriously. The statement was released after Google removed CM file manager and Kika Keyboard apps from play store for deceptive behaviour.