Disclaimer: I’m an iOS guy trying to transfer a relative’s data from an old Samsung to a new Galaxy.
So on her old phone she has multiples of a couple apps, including Instagram and iHeartRadio. One of the apps is 100+ MB, and the other is 1MB. This seems pretty suspicious to me. Am I just being paranoid?
Maybe I am missing something important here but wouldn’t just transferring login info sort that out? Make backups of gallery for Insta just in case and any other app is just config but almost everything is linked through a login now.
But multiple apps with the same name, are u sure they are the apps proper and not shortcut duplicates? What apps are duplicates and what system info can u see on them in the settings/apps thing?
Maybe there’s an option to duplicate apps to allow users to set up multiple different accounts on them. Check if there’s anything like that enabled on the old phone and, eventually, disable it.
Also, if you go through the direct USB data transfer it’s not gonna copy apps directly but download them from the Play Store directly and pulling app data from the cloud backup, removing all possibilities of infections (even through the cloud restore it does that, the direct USB transfer batch copies every folder from the old phone to the new one).
Unfortunately this turned out to not be true. The Samsung SmartSwitch app did transfer at least a couple of pieces of malware. I then wiped the new phone (factory reset), then ran the transfer app again, but skipped app and settings transfer. New phone seems ok now, though she’ll need to download her non-Google apps over again.
That’s stupid! I never owned a Samsung device, I always went through the Google data transfer process on my phones and nothing like that ever happened. I never had malware on my phone, but it surely didn’t transfer whole apks straight from one phone to another. It’s Samsung’s fault for sure.
I didn’t mean to mislead you with my comment, I thought we were talking about the Google setup data transfer.
No, it’s alright. I figured you might be talking about a different transfer utility, which is why I specifically called out Samsung SmartSwitch. After transferring her apps & data over on it, I noticed that some of the same garbage ‘apps’ were on the new phone. Sure enough malwarebytes showed a few pieces of malware had been transferred the new phone.
So I wiped (factory reset) her phone, and ran SmartSwitch again but did not transfer any settings or apps. The result was a clean phone, though she will need to re-download any apps she needs from the ‘Play Store’ (great name, Google.) I have tried to warn her about downloading random crapware from the Play Store, but next time I visit I’ll probably need to set up some kind of anti-virus scanner for her phone.
Malwarebytes, although if you want to run in the background you will need the paid version… $3.75/mo