How to scam anyone very easily...Android style

There are many ways an Android app in Google Play can scam users, such as posing as a popular game or an innocent looking wallpaper app to push ads or malware. But a really brazen way to fool users is to charge actual money for the privilege of getting scammed.

That's apparently what happened with a security app called Virus Shield that promised one-tap security protection. The problem with Security Shield, as first reported by Android Police, is that it didn't actually protect anything.

Instead, all you got after installing the app was a button that changed from an "X" to a check mark...and that's it. No security scanning of app downloads, no active website scanning, no antivirus signatures, nothing.

More than 10,000 people paid $4 for the privilege of downloading the app before it was pulled. So many people downloaded it, in fact, that Virus Shield rose to number one overall in Google Play's list of new top paid apps, and number three in the overall top paid apps chart.

Virus Shield's page in Google Play (pulled from Google's search cache).

Virus Shield's apparent scam shows, once again, that with Google's relatively open approach to app submission users must be on guard against scam apps. Google may catch the con artists eventually, but in the meantime people end up downloading malware, scamware, and other problematic bits of code.

Luckily, Virus Shield's biggest offense was that it cost money. But it could have been worse if the app also tried pilfering user data or downloaded malware onto a user's handset.