The App That Lied About Cleaning Your Phone & Robbed You

Remember when your Android phone died at

300 p.m. and you'd panic? Back in 2012,

there was an app that promised to save

us all. Clean Master, the little app

with a cute broom icon that swore it

could speed up your phone, free up

storage, and turn your dying Android

into a brand new device. Over 1 billion

people downloaded it. Tech blogs

recommended it. Your dad probably had it

installed. There was just one tiny

problem. It [music] was all

Clean Master didn't optimize anything,

but it did manage to steal your data,

flood you with hidden ads, run a $100

million fraud scheme, and probably made

your phone slower. Today, we're diving

into how one app fooled a billion people

and got away with it for years.

Let's go back to 2012. Android phones

were terrible. [music] Battery life was

trash. Your phone would be dead by

lunch. Storage would mysteriously fill

up. Apps would lag and crash. RAM.

[music] What RAM? Most phones had like 1

gig if you were lucky. And most people,

they had no idea how phones actually

[music] worked. They just knew their

phone was slow and they needed help.

That's when Clean Master appeared.

Created by a Chinese company called

Cheetah Mobile. It launched with a pitch

that was simple and beautiful. Clean

junk files. boost RAM, cool down your

CPU, make your phone faster, all with

one tap. It sounded like magic, and

people absolutely ate it up. Within 2

years, Clean Master hit 100 million

daily active users. By 2014, it had over

1 billion downloads. It was featured

everywhere, recommended by tech sites,

and became one of the most popular apps

in Android history. The company behind

it, Cheetah Mobile, went public on the

New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and

raised $168 million. They were valued at

almost $2 billion. And here's a crazy

part. 77% of their users were outside

China. They specifically targeted

international users because a founder,

Fuen, knew Western users were easier to

fool. But here's the thing nobody was

asking. How exactly does a simple app

make your phone run faster? Your phone's

operating system already manages

everything. It controls which apps run

in the background, how much power the

screen uses, how memory works, and it's

been doing this since day one. A third

party app can't just come in and

optimize these [music] things. It

doesn't have that level of access. It's

like hiring a consultant to reorganize

your house when they're not even allowed

inside. So, what was Clean Master

actually doing? Let's break down the

three main features they advertised.

First, the RAM boost. Here's something

most people don't know. [music] Android

is designed to keep apps in memory even

after you close them. It's called a

cache. This makes reopening apps super

fast. When memory is actually needed,

Android automatically kills [music] old

processes. It's smart. Clean M's RAM

boost would forcefully kill all these

cached apps. And what happens? Your apps

have to reload from scratch every time,

which [music] is slower. Your CPU works

harder to restart everything. Your

battery therefore drains faster. [music]

So, the app that promised to speed up

your phone was literally making it

slower. But people saw RAM freed 800 MGB

and thought it was working a treat. Then

there's a junk file cleaning. Cache

files exist for a reason. When WhatsApp

caches your photos, you don't have to

redownload them every time. When Chrome

caches websites, they load instantly.

[music] Android already clears old cache

when storage is needed. But Clean Master

would delete useful cache data which

apps would just immediately reddownload

or recreate. Result: more data usage,

slower apps, and you'd have to clean

again tomorrow because the cash rebuilt

it. [music] It was an infinite loop of

utter uselessness.

And then there's the absolute dumbest

feature, phone cooler. Apps don't have

permission to control CPU frequency or

voltage. That would require root access,

which regular apps don't have. The

cooling app itself runs in the

background, generating the very heat it

claims to fix. Any [music] temperature

drop you saw was either fake numbers or

just your phone naturally cooling down

on its own. [music] It was theater. pure

theater. But millions of people believed

it worked. Why? Because of the placebo

effect. [music] When you tap optimize

and see fancy animations, progress bars,

[music] and statistics saying your phone

is 47% faster. You feel better. You

believe it's working. Plus, Clean

Master's UI was pretty slick. The

animations were satisfying. It felt like

you were doing something productive,

even though you weren't. It was the

perfect scam. Selling people a solution

to a problem that couldn't actually be

solved, but making them feel [music]

like it worked. The truth is, scams like

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A huge thanks to Brilliant for

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people think smarter about the

technology shaping our world. But back

to the fake optimization. That was just

the beginning. The real money wasn't in

helping users, it was in exploiting

them.

Clean Master was free. So, how was

Cheetah Mobile making money? Three

words: fraud, fraud, and you guessed it,

fraud. Every time you open the app,

you'd see ads. Every time you optimized,

more ads. And those weren't just

annoying, they were extremely

profitable. But in November 2018,

everything [music] exploded when

BuzzFeed News dropped a bombshell

investigation. Clean Master and seven

other Cheetah mobile apps with over two

billion combined downloads were running

a massive ad fraud operation. Here's how

the scam worked. App developers pay

bounties like one to three bucks per

install. [music] When someone downloads

their app after clicking an ad, Cheetah

Mobile figured out how to steal these

bounties. Clean Master had permission to

see when you downloaded new apps. So

when you installed anything, the app

would detect the download. fake clicking

on ads in the background, take credit

for the install, and [music] collect the

bounty. You never clicked those ads. You

never saw them. But Clean Masters stole

credit and pocketed the money. This

operation generated between $4 to $7

million per month, over $100 million

total. When confronted, Cheetah Mobile

blamed SDK providers. Nobody bought that

But it gets way darker. Why would

a phone cleaner need to record your

audio, take photos, read [music] your

calendar, and access your contacts?

Because Clean Master wasn't a cleaning

app. It was a data harvesting operation

[music] disguised as a utility tool. The

apps were just the delivery mechanism.

The real product was you. So, what did

Google do about all this? At first, not

much. In December 2018, they removed a

couple of apps for deceptive behavior.

Slap on [music] the wrist. But then

February 2020, Google dropped the

hammer. Google announced they were

removing approximately 600 apps from the

Play Store. Every single Cheetah mobile

app. 45 apps total were permanently

banned. These apps had been downloaded 4

and a half billion times. The violation,

disruptive ads. Apps were showing full

screen ads when you were on phone calls,

unlocking your phone or using GPS

navigation, basically hijacking your

device to force you to see ads. Google

also banned Cheetah Mobile from ADM Mob,

their advertising network, which cut off

22% of the company's revenue [music]

immediately.

But here's the thing about getting

caught running a $100 million fraud

scheme. It doesn't just end with a ban.

The real consequences were only just

beginning. The impact was immediate and

brutal. Cheetah Mobile's revenue didn't

just drop, it collapsed. [music] The

stock crashed. Their market cap went

from billions to almost nothing. And

suddenly, a company that was worth $2

billion was fighting for survival. But

it gets worse. In September 2022, the US

Securities and Exchange Commission came

knocking. They charged CEO Fuen and the

former president with [music] insider

trading. Turns out back in 2016, they

found out revenues were about to tank.

And before telling investors, before

telling the public, they quietly sold

$300,000

worth of their own stock to avoid

losses. Classic fraud. The SEC finded

them over $750,000

and ban them from future trading plans.

So, let's recap. Ad fraud, data theft,

lying to users, lying to investors,

insider trading, Cheetah Mobile speedran

every type of corporate crime possible.

So where is Clean Master now?

Permanently banned from the Google Play

Store. The only way to get it is by

downloading a sketchy [music] APK from

Cheetah Mobile's website, which security

experts say you should never do. Tutotor

Mobile still exists as a company, but

they've completely pivoted. They can't

operate in mobile apps anymore. So now

they're trying to build robots and AI.

Spoiler, it's not going well. In 2024,

they lost $85 million despite generating

110 million in revenue. They're just

burning cash with no path to

profitability. The company that was once

worth $2 billion is now worth basically

nothing. The CEO who spoke at tech

conferences is now fighting SEC charges

[music] and the app that a billion

people trusted is banned worldwide.

It's kind of poetic really. But Clean

Master wasn't alone. The February 2020

Google ban removed 600 apps with 4.5

billion total installs. Most were from

developers in China, Hong Kong,

Singapore, and India. [music] All were

running similar scams. There was DU

Battery Saver, CM Launcher, Battery

Doctor, Security Master. The list goes

on and on. A study found that 2/3 of

Android antivirus and cleaner apps are

pure snake oil. Out of 250 apps tested,

only 80 could detect even 30% of actual

threats. Many [music] introduced

security vulnerabilities. The

fundamental problem is that these apps

exploit people who don't understand

[music] how phones work. Because people

don't know that Android manages memory

automatically, cache files are useful,

software can't cool hardware, or that

battery saving apps use more battery

than they save. They're vulnerable to

apps promising miracles. The good news,

though, is that things have gotten much

better. Google now uses machine learning

to proactively detect scam [music] apps

before they get popular. Android 14

restricted the APIs that let task

killers interfere with memory

management. App stores have stricter

requirements for permissions and users

are becoming more educated. Tech forums,

security researchers, [music] and videos

like this are helping people to wise up.

But the story of Clean Master should be

a permanent reminder. If an app promises

to dramatically improve your phone

through cleaning or optimization, it's

lying. Your phone's operating system is

built by thousands of engineers over

decades. It already handles everything.

You don't need a third party app made by

a sketchy company to quote unquote

[music] fix it. If you like this deep

dive into tech scams, please hit [music]

subscribe. I've got plenty more stories

like this coming. So, let me know in the

comments. Did you ever use Clean Master?

What made you finally uninstall it?

Thanks for watching and I'll see you in

the next one.