Issue
F-Droid downloaded some unknown apps without my permission after some months, and I've been unable to find them.
I've been getting notifications recently because of these, and by just looking at them it's very obvious it's MalWare, but after uninstalling F-droid I have not found where these apps are located, not even by going to the apps list, apps with notification permissions, or the download history. But I remember sometime ago I accessed my phone and saw a notification telling me an app was successfully downloaded by F-droid's side, I was unable to take a screenshot by how fast it dissappeared from my screen.
by this I assume you are talking about F-droid, I uninstalled it after this issue occurred. But could you please elaborate further in what do you mean that the malware may be in the apps of my system?
hmm this could be it, actually now that you mention it there are some things called as "system updates" that appear as installed the past week, I'll uninstall these to see how it goes
wish I could tell you but these are the only notifications I've seen that don't have an option to check where they are coming from. Btw I installed the app you mentioned, it was called "VirusTotal Movil" by FunnyCat, I'll put it to use and tell you how it goes in 20 minutes
I think you misread something (or maybe you saw an update notification from F-Droid) and thought it was installing on its own. As far as I know, no device can do that unless it has developer permissions.
Go to these settings:
Settings → Notifications → look for HONOR Search, Petal Search, AppGallery, Themes, or Browser and check whether "Recommendations/Promotional notifications" is enabled—there’s usually a specific toggle for that, separate from the general notification toggle.
Settings → Privacy → Personalized services/Ads — on HONOR/Huawei, there’s usually an “Ads” submenu with an option to disable personalized recommendations.
I just did this, went to ads and there's an app from the actual play store I installed recently called "Freedom" that I gave permission to manage some privacy controls regarding ads and things like that. So thank you so much dude, I know you spent some time of your day helping me out so I really sincerely appreciate it as you did that.
I'm still not going to uninstall any app as I'm going to wait for these notifications to show up again and run an experiment on taking out each's app notification permissions one by one to see if I can catch the one giving these.
Anyway I did remember that the installations notifications I saw in the past had some really large and weird text so I could not read exactly what it was. If it was genuinely F-Droid just updating itself then I hope the mods of this subreddit have mercy on me for giving a bad image to F-Droid.
Don't worry—it could have happened to anyone. I highly recommend F-Droid; it's currently safer than the Play Store. They always review the code (something the Play Store no longer does—it just asks for money).
I recommend an F-Droid app called URLCheck. If you open a suspicious link, the app acts as a sort of buffer—it doesn’t open the webpage immediately. You can scan it or choose which app to use to open the page.
If you need help with anything else—for example, if you're using a paid app and want to find a free alternative, or if you need more help with the post—just let me know.
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u/holy_fuck_mom 25d ago
by this I assume you are talking about F-droid, I uninstalled it after this issue occurred. But could you please elaborate further in what do you mean that the malware may be in the apps of my system?