The software security company ESET researchers warn over eight applications on Google Play store that deceived users, leading them to pay for the subscriptions to Premium SMS services and share their personal information.
Fake Apps On Google Play Tricked 1 Million Android Users
IB experts of the software security company ESET found eight counterfeit Android applications on Google Play, all designed to increase subscribers in social networks. With the application, the researchers named Android/Fasurke, through which the hackers steal personal information and money from the victims.
During the campaign the IB experts of the software security company ESET found, the fraudulent programs were already available on the Google Play store for more than four months and managed to achieve the download figure of 250,000 – 1,000,000, means it able to infect Up to a million users’ Android devices.
The application requests the user’s personal data, permanent paid subscriptions, as well as consent to receive marketing messages and advertisements. When you run the program the user is prompted to enter the name of the mobile device model, its name and the number of subscribers, which he/she would like to receive. After starting “the process of increasing subscribers” it was necessary to pass the so-called check on the robot.
According to the sources, users are invited to a lot of different gifts, coupons and free services in exchange for personal data and information, such as name, email address, address, phone number, date of birth and gender. Even after the negative comments, the popularity of the applications did not fall down.
Hence, the software security company ESET strives to clarify that it is impossible to obtain followers through a tool or mobile application. However, the tech giant Google has been notified of the problem and the applications have been removed from the Google Play store. Moreover, the software security company ESET experts have warned that it is still possible that Google Play store might have the other applications of this nature, hence, recommend the users to stay alerted and beware.
