How to avoid automatic installation of applications on android?

It is very common that after installing an application from Google Play, other unwanted applications appear. This can happen after a few minutes or days after installing the application they wanted.

Many of these people believe that the alternative to eliminate this situation of automatic installations is to delete them. But, in most cases, they are reinstalled on the phone.

Something that can help you to prevent other applications from installing themselves, is to disable “automatic updates”. This option allows smartphones to download updates when they have access to wifi. Therefore, it can bring unwanted installation.

When no solution is found, many people go to a technician and spend money to have the phone reset or have the software changed. So, here are the possible reasons and solutions to put an end to unwanted installations.

The first thing to do is to find out the origin from which the unwanted application was installed. Therefore, go to “settings” and then to “applications”, to know the source of the installation. When you select the unwanted application, the information indicating from where it was installed will appear.

Once this is done, we will show you the steps to follow to fix it without spending money.

Step to step to prevent automatic installation

After having done the previous steps, from the “Applications” screen, with the app information, click on ” Deactivate” or “Disable”. This will prevent the application from running in the background and wasting memory, megabytes, etc…

Now, to prevent another application from being installed without our permission, we must go to “settings”, “advanced settings” “installation of unknown applications”. We will deactivate this last option so that if an application is going to be installed, it will ask us first. If you have installed an APK application before, probably this option was enabled.

Another option to avoid automatic installations and that works so that Google Play does not do it, is in “parental control”. To get this option, we open Google Play and in settings will be the parental control option. Then, we will activate the switch and it will ask for a key set by us. In this way, the configuration will be protected from being deactivated.

It is possible that if you like to download a lot of files from sites other than Google Play or secure sites, you may download malware. If the apps install themselves, it can be considered a sign of malware although it is not the only reason there is.

To make sure that malware is the reason why applications are automatically installed, you should download an antivirus. One of the applications used is “Virus Total”, which scans your device for malwares.

Deleted the virus and app

After we have scanned our phone with the antivirus and found the malware, we must do some steps to fix it. We will perform these processes in case the first steps did not work.

Most of the antivirus that we can install are not able to remove all the malware that our phone has. For this reason, we need to perform other processes that allow us to permanently delete the malware.

There are three simple processes that will remove malware from your smartphone without needing technicians. Here’s how to do this with safe mode, Factory reset and Hard Reset.

Use safe mode

This is the least invasive method that may solve some malware cases. We should always try options from the least invasive to the most invasive.

To remove the apps that are installed automatically and without permission, it is recommended that we use the safe mode. We access it by pressing the power button until the “Off” button appears.

In that screen, an announcement will ask if we want to start in safe mode, we click “Accept” and wait for it to turn on. Once the system has started, you will see all the applications that are installed and you will be able to delete them without any problem.

Factory reset the phone

It is likely that we will not have to reset our phone to the factory model, but it may be the case for some. You should note that this function will delete all the data on your phone, including your contacts. It is recommended that you make a backup of your files before resetting your phone.

To reset our android, we need to do the following steps:

• Go to “Settings”, in the system menu.
• Click on “Reset device” or “Recovery options” where you must check the option to erase all data.
• We will see some instructions on the screen that we must follow and then, the phone will restart. Once it is turned on, you will have to set it up again and apply the backup you have created.
• It is recommended that you always have your contacts saved in an email account, so that they can be restored more easily.

Hard Reset

This option should be our last alternative in case the previous options have not worked. If we must resort to a Hard Reset it is because the smartphone has other problems that prevent the previous solutions working. It is very similar to the mobile reset, but this one is deeper, because it works on its internal memory.

The steps to make a Hard Reset are:

• Turn off the phone and look for the “recovery menu”. To access it we must press and hold the power button and the volume up button at the same time. In some phones it is the volume down button or some other button on the screen.
• Press and hold both buttons until you see the Recovery menu.
• In the Recovery menu, we will have to move the cursor with the volume up and volume down buttons. We will do this until we get the option “Wipe Data” which we will select by pressing the power button. By doing this, we will have removed any virus that our smartphone may have had.