Russian email app mistakenly loaded on some Android powered Samsung devices by Google Play

A glitch caused by Google allowed some owners of Android flavored Samsung models to wake up Monday morning with a Russian email app installed on their phone. The app, MTS Mobile Mail, was originally thought to be malware but it turned out to be a legitimate app that was not supposed to be installed. In fact, the app is said to be notoriously hard to install and this could have been part of the reason for the errant download.

According to The Verge, the developer behind MTS Mobile Mail, OJSC Mobile Telesystems, also worked on Samsung's email app and might have used the same identifier, com.seven.Z7, and the same signing certificate for both. If so, sharing these would lead to the installation on Samsung phones as the phone could have be tricked into thinking that it was an update to Samsung's native email app. Removing the app would be above the ability of the average user, but not for an Xda-developer forum poster whose solution you will find below. In the meantime, MTS Mobile Mail has been removed from Google Play.