Google was made aware of an issue with a little over 20 applications in the Android Market that were malicious. These apps gained system access when downloaded and intercepted and secretly transmitted private data from user’s handsets to third party servers. To make matters worse, some of these apps have been downloaded over 50,000 times.
Google started using a remote ‘kill switch’ feature to wireless kill the apps on user’s handsets. In addition to removing the apps, Google is adding new code that prevents user data from being shared. (via Google)
