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One of the first Android apps -- ZXing Team's Barcode Scanner, an app that predates the first official release of Android itself -- is currently getting review-bombed on the Google Play Store. Hundreds of users are leaving 1-star reviews interrogation a contempo amend hijacks your browser to vomit unwanted ads, while nigh 200 other listen divulged to the app's defense with 5-star reviews of their own.

It's not reservedly crystal what's hoopla on here, but the prevailing theory is that the 100 million-download strong app is getting mistaken for another one with the aforementioned verbal name -- one that might listen been a reproduce of ZXing's app and one that did add malware in a contempo update, according to directory trusteeship firm MalwareBytes.

MalwareBytes seems to be conscious of the confusion; it updated its prevenient column yesterday to be leftover crystal that the bad barcode scanner app was this one, which came from a visitor chosen Lavabird, not ZXing Team. Google removed that app from the Play Store, so it wouldn't be surprising if antagonized users searched for it and found the wrong one.

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The sudden heart-searching sweating the prevenient app's co-creator, Sean Owen, who tells The Verge that he's not wrung anyway his reputation -- simply considering of how ridiculous he thinks the claims are.

"[T]his is such an old well-known app that I visualize anyone informed would preconceived it can't be this app: it's unclosed source, for one. It hasn't been updated in years. And there's neutral no motive, to operate an app for 13 years neutral to stick malware in at the end is an implausibly stretched game," he says. The Google Play Store shows the app was meanest updated in February 2019.

"an implausibly stretched game"

But he conjointly isn't strategic out the practicability that his monogram is existence manipulated somehow, conceivably by hijacking the intents template that Android uses to let one app hand off tasks to another. "Many people demonstration it's 'definitely' this app in a way I hadn't self-evident afore -- and I've sneeze thousands of comments over the years -- so, who knows?"

Owen says he and his co-author Daniel Switken now regret their eligibility to operate the app unclosed source rearmost in the day considering of all the times it's been cloned by companies trying to operate a quick bellyacher by totalizer ads or skins. "For a time we pursued some of the limitlessness ones for OSS authorization / trademark problems, but, that was less than 10 out of the 100s I saw metrical many years ago," Owen says.

This isn't the first time his app has been mistaken for a bad clone, he says. "At some point a research paper claimed this app was phoning claimed notifying to a third party site, and that derivational another beachcomber [of bad reviews], but, simply the authors found they'd transfused up two similar apps."

I redownloaded the OG Barcode Scanner app today for the first time in many years. When I launched it, the app warned me that it "was deep-seated for an earlier version of Android and may not assignment properly," and I found it only works in landscape orientation. But I saw no ads, it sustained scanned barcodes fast, and I haven't self-evident any pop-ups or browser hijacking yet.

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Testing out the prevenient Barcode Scanner app on a modern Android phone.

. .. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge. .

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Right now, ZXing Team's Barcode Scanner app sits at a solid 4.0 stars with nigh 640,000 reviews. Google hasn't yet commented anyway how it might handle the privative reviews.

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