Close on the heels of its last-week announcement about having detected what it termed as the Android. Counterclank "threat" involving the most widespread fraction of Android malware, Symantec has now retracted the `malware' claims to align with a much hushed assessment of the threat by Lookout Mobile Security.

It was on last Friday morning that Symantec announced the discovery of a new Trojan which it said was packaged within 13 free games, with between 1 and 5 million downloads apiece. However, Symantec has now retracted the claim, after the disquieting assessment was clearly undermined by Lookout.

With Lookout taking up the issue with the Symantec announcement and emphasizing that the apps were merely a part of an "aggressive" ad network instead of malware, Symantec investigated further and withdrew its malware claims, saying that the apps actually are adware or spyware.

The criticism for fearmongering and false positives has prompted Symantec to revise its earlier claims about the "malware" apps, and the company has now clarified in a follow-up post that the situation it is currently facing could well be compared with to the one in which "Adware, Spyware, and Potentially Unwanted Applications first made appearances on Windows."

In a further elaboration of its standpoint, Symantec said that though most security vendors did not initially detect these applications, ultimately, and with the widespread endorsement from computer users, "security companies chose to notify users of these types of applications."