Google Hasn’t Deleted Cryptocurrency Mining Apps In Play Store Despite Last Month’s Ban

Last month, Google revised the terms of service in its Play Store, banning the cryptocurrency mining application.

The revised terms of service clearly state the following:

“We don’t allow apps that mine cryptocurrency on devices.”

However, Google also mentioned that apps which remotely manage cryptocurrency mining are permitted, so that is one way to explain the reason why some mining apps still exist. Despite the ban, a few digital currency mining apps either updated to abide by the new terms – nor have removed their apps from the store.

These mining apps include BTC Miner Pool, Bitcoin Mining and Pickaxe Miner which still live on Google Play. Cloud Bitcoin Miner, on the other hand, revised its services in accordance with the new Google terms.

A mining app named MinerGate last week announced the new version of its app for Google Play, stating that it has been designed for “monitoring and managing” the user’s mining process in order to abide by the new Google terms. MinerGate told Hard Fork:

“Mining on your phone directly was among the core features of the MinerGate app before the last changes in Google Play Development policies. With the last update, we are removing this functionality to meet the updated requirements.”

The same re-launch model was initiated by one UK-based blockchain startup called JSEcoin which facilitates cryptocurrency mining. So, it is safe to say that Google’s ban on crypto mining is for “90% of all extensions with mining scripts that developers have attempted to upload to Chrome Web Store”, as the search engine giant said last year.

So far, many malicious cryptojacking apps have been banned after an Android app was found cryptojacking devices in January 2017, followed by many other apps that mined Monero (XMR), followed by the ICO advertisements ban imposed from June this year.