another type of attack sadly

Hi all.
Well for the last few days message on the family phones state an pdf reader needs updating.
It can be on whats app, youtube or anywhere the phone is used.
Possibly this appeared on a website or an add on youtube or in the player or well anywhere really.
These look like system messages but are not obviously such.
The google play store is filled with a lot of add supported apps which simply download more apps, state your data is at risk, you are hacked, have a virus etc.
Sadly if you want to do a qr scan or read a pdf, you get a load of these.
They may look like run pdf or all pdf or well anything pdf related to be honest.
Its easy to get sucked in.
If you are in a hurry to view a video like a funeral or something, or well anything and get an update you will assume its legit and hit yes.
All messages then ask you to install the apps.
You load them and then you are hooked.
You will be prompted roodly to load and load and load and load.
Its easy to get caught, because the messages are realistic and when I was first caught with the issues my first point was to take the phones in question to get fixed.
Once caught you will need to hit the power and volume down buttons or similar to reset the phone as its locked.
Remove everything that says pdf and go on with your day.
Sadly I now wander if getting apps from the play store as it stands is a good idea.
Its the only place to legally get apps.
Luckilly apps like adobe mobile apps on google should direct you to adobe’s site with qr codes to get the app in question.
To view pdfs, chrome should do it and then there is a pdf viewer.
To qr scan there is a quick one under settings and a camera app in the phone that will do this.
Sadly it means you can’t just randomly load and review apps.
Fortunately this did not result in any data or account dammage but was annoying as all heck.
With all apps deleted the issues went away at least for me.
I am unsure how so much malware and spam escaped to google but any legit software makers have the right to get really angry.
So here is the deal.
For the users if you want an app I’d actually search for the company website, and get your app that way rather than searching the store for it right now.
I wouldn’t just go through and pick something up and go yay I have an app.
Ask others what they have and get the wording right.
Check reviews, etc.
It concerns me because the easy way to go about this is concidder the play store full of spam pdf apps are spam and every android app is spam.
I wish it could be that easy to tell google to fuck off.
Problem is its the only legal source for us to get apps.
But I do think google need to up their game.
I get it the net is full of bad guys and such and has been for ages.
But if the google store is like that, what about the microsoft store or apple store.
I am scared every time a notification appears now.
And worse I have no idea how the initial message appeared or from where.
Its a continuous battle but I certainly will be searching for the app on its site and loading it directly rather than just searching round for the latest pick.
Where possible I’d use my pc.
Luckilly my mum doesn’t need to view pdfs and my dad has an office 365 subscription and can edit and view those in that.
If you need to use a reader other than the internal adobe acrobat is still the best one.
You can search for adobe mobile apps for it, and you can get adobe reader the same way, searching for it and downloading it.
I’d like to be able to search the google play store for my legit apps but with the many malware laced ones I’m going to have to give that a miss.
If you must use pdfs in your business, get adobe acrobat pro, or well office 365 whatever sub you want you will still get 1tb of cloud storage.