The Cyber Security Review | Saturday, December 03, 2022
Google Play and Apple App stores over claims they promised quick loans at reasonable rates but then used extortion and other predatory schemes against borrowers.
FREMONT, CA: The Google Play and Apple App stores have removed over 300 apps, which were downloaded by about 15 million users, due to allegations that they advertised rapid loans at competitive rates but afterwards turned to extortion and other predatory tactics against customers.
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The loans included a high-interest rate and hidden fees that increased the payments, and the apps requested private information from users' mobile devices. Researchers at cybersecurity provider Lookout said that this includes SMS messages, photographs, phone history, and contact lists that were then exploited against victims.
The researchers stated in a paper that in certain cases, the data exfiltrated from the device was used to coerce debtors by threatening to reveal the data or information regarding the loan to their contacts.
A total of 35 iOS apps discovered among the top 100 financial apps in local stores were located in the Apple Store, and more than 251 Android apps that have been downloaded more than 15 million times were discovered in the Google Play souk. Lookout informed Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) that none of the apps was available for download.
The vice president of solutions architecture for Cerberus Sentinel, what's been found is a little drop in the bucket overall, adding that anything over zero shouldn't be acceptable.
According to Statista, there were more than 2.6 million apps on Google Play and nearly 4 million in the Apple Store.
Predatory lending apps like this have been a concern in the past. As previously reported, India's Home Ministry ordered state governments to crack down severely on illegal lending applications, claiming that they were to blame for several suicides among borrowers who had been hounded and intimidated into making repayments.
Google reportedly removed 2,000 loan apps from its Play Store in India during the year's first half. According to research done by Lookout, there were probably dozens of independent operators behind the apps, with just a handful of them sharing code bases. All the apps, nevertheless, used a similar strategy of duping consumers into accepting unreasonable lending terms before threatening to demand repayment.
The apps targeted consumers in developing nations, including Africa, Southeast Asia, India, Colombia, and Mexico, but they could not determine where the scammers were from. These nations typically have individuals with lower incomes and easy access to mobile apps, as well as lax financial regulations and a lack of enforcement.
The researchers noted that the emphasis on poor nations may partly explain why we observed more loan fraud apps on Android than on iOS. With more than 70 per cent of the market outside of the US, Android is considerably more widely used, in part due to the accessibility of really affordable Android smartphones.
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