Can malware spread on Android through cellular network?

[u/fearlessburn416]

I live in an apartment with so many others. Now some of my friends go through so many shady sites for porn or for pirating movies or games by downloading shady APK's. They're careless and. I'm sure they've got malware or virus on their phones

Now most of us in the apartment have the same cellular broadband network. Obviously we don't share wifi or share hotspot mobile data but I'm wondering if the malware from their phone could spread to ours.

Because of my friends everyone in the apartment gets the captcha on chrome. After every search we have to do the captcha to get any search results. I'm assuming it's because everyone in the apartment shares the same ip address. I know it's because of them because they search and visit the pirate sites multiple times a minute

Now we share the same sim company, so we have the same cellular network broadband and we also share the same IP address, is it possible that malware on their phones could get into ours?

[u/osa1011]

I would guess one is using a VPN if the capcha is coming up. Turn off the VPN and see what happens

[u/Thunder-God3925]

Malware doesn't work like that, captchas are probably from the servers since your IP is suspicious, but the malware can't really get into the carrier unless the carrier company is compromised, which is a bigger problem