Secure-D from Upstream detected 1.69 million malware-infected android devices in South Africa last year. Within many popular apps, Malware is lurking unseen and committing background fraud that targets advertisers, operators and consumers. The blocked transactions came from more than 18,000 different applications.
While the rogue apps behave normally on a smartphone’s screen, they surreptitiously click on links and adverts, sign users up to subscription services and consume vast amounts of data from prepaid contracts. Not only do advertisers pay app developers for the false clicks, the fraudulent apps are also used to steal personal data about the smartphone user without any visible sign of the fraudulent activity.
Specialist mobile security company Upstream
works with a number of operators in South Africa to protect consumers
and businesses from this type of fraud. The company’s Secure-D platform
monitors app activity and blocks suspicious
transactions. In an end
of year report, Upstream revealed that it checked more than
50 million Android transactions in South Africa in 2019, identifying and
blocking 86 percent of them as fraudulent.
Fraudsters recognize that smartphone users
regularly watch and share videos, and they often hide malicious activity
in video apps. In 2019, South Africa’s worst three offending Apps were
all video apps:
1 – VidMate: 15 million blocked transactions
Downloaded worldwide more than 500 million times – Vidmate lets people download videos and songs from popular social media sites and entertainment services, allowing users to watch content offline. In the background, however, a hidden component generates fake clicks and purchases and downloads other suspicious apps without the user’s knowledge. Vidmate was by far the most dangerous app in South Africa in 2019, and is now only available on independent Apps stores, having been removed from Google Play.
2 – Snaptube: 2 million blocked transactions
The Snaptube video app infected 4.4 million handsets and generated more than 70 million fraudulent transactions, with 2 million of those transactions originating in South Africa. Upstream exposed Snaptube in October 2019, but it is also still available on third-party Android app stores.
3 – Vivavideo: 560,000 blocked transactions
A very popular video editing software app for smartphones, Vivavideo has been downloaded more than 100 million times worldwide. But just like Vidmate, its background behaviour leaves a lot to be desired and Secure D was working hard to block more than half a million fraudulent transactions in South Africa alone.
Global results
According to a report
on the state of malware and mobile ad fraud released by mobile technology company Upstream,
93 percent of total mobile transactions in 20 countries were blocked as fraudulent in 2019. Data from theInvisible
Digital Threatis based on deployments of Upstream’s Secure-D
full-stack anti-fraud platform, which detects and blocks fraudulent
mobile transactions that primarily originated from ad fraud malware. At
the end of 2019, Secure-D was used by 31 mobile operators in 20
countries.
In those markets,
Upstream’s security platform processed 1.71 billion mobile transactions
and blocked 1.6 billion of them as fraudulent, a staggering 93 percent
of total transactions. It’s estimated that these
transactions would have cost users $2.1bn in unwanted charges had they
not been identified. For the industry as a whole, losses
from online, mobile and in-app advertising reached $42 billion in 2019 and are expected to reach $100 billion by 2023.
Why Android mobile phones are targeted
Fraudsters target Android handsets because
the open operating system is easier to work with, and there are a host
of unofficial places to visit and download apps. Additionally, in
countries like South Africa, a large proportion of
consumers use prepaid mobile phones as their main method to access the
Internet. These users also often use their airtime credit to buy digital
services, enabling fraudsters to subscribe users to premium services
without their knowledge.
