apps keep downloading onto my phone making the phone unuseable

Robert

Hi, this problem is driving me crazy ... I have a Utok D40 and the only games on it were Subway Surfer and Clash of Clans.
Then a whole host of "apps" started downloading onto the phone ... I tried and tried to uninstall them one by one but the just kept coming back and it was like they were running interference for each other, and most of them were very inapropriate.
I finally gave up as the phone had become so slow and most of the time not working at all.
I did a hard reset on the phone back to its "out of the box" state.
When I started it up I got the "Welcome" message, which was nice, but after about 10 minutes all the "apps" started coming back again.
The only apps that didn't come back were Subway Surfer and Clash of Clans.
I don't know what to do ... I keep getting regular "Unfortunately ............. is not working" messages which effectively stop me from doing anything.
I would appreciate any help ...

To stop apps from downloading automatically, goto Google Play settings, set "Auto-update Apps" to "Do Not Auto-update Apps"

I would suggest going into your app manager and force closing everything that is absolutely not necessary to run your phone, i.e. memory booster is notoriously malware ridden along with a host of other apps of this nature. When your go into your app manager, if the app is not strictly necessary to run your phone force stop it, go to your battery monitor and look to see which apps are running in the background, this should be able to point you in the right direction of the culprit that's making things auto download. I copied [ this from the Internet this morning hoping that that it might help you
You need to delete / remove the app thats doing the downloading... in addition to the downloaded apps.

If it were me, I would start by uninstalling any app thats not absolutely necessary. So that means any app thats redundant and performs tasks already being done by the android OS. battery optimizers, RAM / memory optimizers, screen brightness widgets, flashlights...etc.

Uninstall or at least deactivate all un-needed bloatware from either the manufacturer or carrier. The bloatware that is needed, you should scan through the permissions and turn off any that are not needed.

Any apps that weren't downloaded from playstore or a known / trusted developer site should be treated as potentially malicious, and targeted for deletion.

One thing I ALWAYS do before downloading any app is I will google search the App name and developer (separately). "Is cheetah mobile safe?"... "Is battery doctor safe?". Any app or developer with history or www discussions centering around malicious activity, I read up on and make the keep or kill decision based on that.

I think you might have to clear cache too, and you should consider doing a factory reset. If your device is rooted... thats another layer of procedures you will need to go through. (which frankly I don't know)