Bitcoin Alien's "Litecoin Giveaway" & "Bitcoin Cash Giveaway" Apps Removed From Google Play

Every week, I earn anywhere from a nickel to quarter's worth of BCH and LTC from the Bitcoin Cash Giveaway and Litecoin Giveaway apps from the developer Bitcoin Aliens. I was surprised today to see that both apps were gone from my phone, as well as the Google Play store. It was quite strange; they both seemed to have completely fallen off the face of the digital Earth. 

I contacted Bitcoin Aliens to see what was going on. Here is the response they gave me:

Our apps contain an implementation of the OkSpin Game Space which is being incorrectly identified as potential malware or spyware. As a precautionary measure the game space has been paused for all our users and is no longer available in our apps. And we hope to work with Google on an appeal to reinstate the apps on Google Play as soon as possible.

They went on to assure me that either anti-virus or Play Protect was likely responsible for automatically uninstalling the apps. All payouts will still be processed every Tuesday, so long as you are above the payment threshold. If I recall correctly, for Bitcoin Cash it is 50,000 satoshis and 100,000 litoshis for Litecoin. The payouts will continue, even if either app isn't installed on your device.

For the statement from OkSpin, visit https://okspin.tech/blog/post47.html and https://okspin.tech/blog/post48.html for a more techinical overview on how they handle data.

So, hopefully the Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin Giveaway apps return soon. They are good sources of "crypto dust" and are legit in their payouts. Until now, if you try to access its app store page, you will be met with the following:

If you have already downloaded and installed the apps, they can be retrieved by unblocking them through Play Protect and they will still function as normal.