By Jack Wallen | October 31, 2016, 12:27 PM PST
Your Android device most likely contains unused apps that could still use data or fall prey to vulnerabilities. The solution to this potential security problem: delete those apps.
Quick! Open your Android device, go to the App Drawer, and count the number of apps you no longer use that are still installed. Now go back through that list of apps you no longer use and find out which ones are no longer maintained or which suffer from long-standing malware vulnerabilities.
Done? Didn't think so.
You may have forgotten that you installed a particular app from a third-party source—and yet, there it sits in your app drawer, waiting for you to use it. Was it sitting in the background, all this time, collecting data and sending it to a nefarious destination? According to Cheetah Mobile, malware accounts for up to 1% of all applications installed every day. That means there's a 1% chance that your device has been compromised by malware.
One percent isn't much, but it's not zero.
All of a sudden, keeping track of your Android apps from a security perspective is no longer such an easy task. But this challenge does come with a purpose to illustrate a single point: Uninstall unused apps on your device. It's simple and elegant, yet the advice so often falls on deaf ears.
It's so easy to forget them
According to Google 25% of installed apps are either never used or used immediately and then forgotten. Also, the average Android app loses 77% of daily active users within the first three days of an app being installed and 90% within the first 30 days. After that magic 30 days, chances are you will have forgotten you ever installed the app.
And the thing is, we are creatures of habit...even with our mobile devices. We use the apps we use and beyond that...everything else is easily forgotten.
This is especially true of apps like home screen launchers. Most often this type of app is installed without an associated icon in the App Drawer; because of this, it's very easy to forget you ever installed the app—out of sight, out of mind. In fact, the only time you
