A total of\n93% of total mobile transactions in 20 countries were blocked as fraudulent in\n2019, according to a report on the state of malware and mobile ad fraud\nreleased by mobile technology company, Upstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Invisible\nDigital Threat<\/em> data is based on deployments of Upstream\u2019s\nSecure-D full-stack anti-fraud platform that that detects and blocks fraudulent\nmobile transactions mostly originated from ad fraud malware. The platform at\nthe end of 2019 covered 31 mobile operators in 20 countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the\nmarkets examined, Upstream\u2019s security platform processed 1.71 billion mobile transactions and\nblocked 1.6 billion of them as fraudulent, a staggering 93% of total\ntransactions. It is estimated that left unchecked these transactions would have\ncost users US$2.1bn in unwanted charges. For the\nindustry, losses from online, mobile and in-app advertising reached US$42\nbillion in 2019 and are expected to reach US$100 billion by 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The number of\nmalicious apps discovered by Secure-D last year rose to 98,000, up from 63,000\nin 2018. These 98,000 malicious apps had infected 43 million Android\ndevices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Android\ndevices now accounting for an estimate 75 to 85% of all smartphone sales\nworldwide, Android is by far the most dominant mobile operating system (OS). At\nthe same time, it is the most vulnerable due to its open nature, making it a\nfavourite playground for fraudsters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While, as\nmentioned in the Secure-D report, it is always a good rule of thumb for\nconsumers to only download mobile applications from Google\u2019s official\nstorefront, Google Play, thanks to its scale and set up, rogue apps are still\ngetting through its defences. Of the top 100 most active malicious apps that\nwere blocked in 2019, 32% are reported still available to download on Google\nPlay. A further 19% of the worst-offending apps were previously on Google Play\nbut have since been removed, while the remaining apps are available through\nthird-party app stores. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fraudsters appear to target some app categories more than others. Ironically, apps designed to make a device function better and make everyday life easier are the ones most likely to be harmful with 22.32% of malicious apps for 2019 falling under the tools\/personalisation\/productivity category globally. The next most popular categories cybercriminals target are games (18.97%) and entertainment\/shopping (15.76%). Indicating scale, in the course of only a few months in 2019, Secure-D reported on the suspicious background activity of five very popular Android apps: 4shared, a popular file-sharing app; Vidmate, a video downloader; Weather Forecast a preinstalled app on Alcatel devices; Snaptube, another video and audio app; and ai.type, an on-screen keyboard app. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With a total\nof nearly 700 million downloads, these were or had been at some point\navailable on Google Play. In these five cases alone, Secure-D detected and\nblocked 353 million suspicious mobile transactions preventing US$430 million in\nfraudulent charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dimitris\nManiatis, CEO of Upstream, said: \u201cMobile ad fraud is a criminal enterprise on a\nmassive scale. Though it may seem that it is only targeted at advertisers, it\ngreatly affects the whole mobile ecosystem. Most importantly it adversely\nimpacts consumers; eating up their data allowance, bringing unwanted charges,\nmessing with the performance of their device and even targeting and collecting\ntheir personal data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is more\nthan an invisible threat, it is an epidemic, calling for increased mobile\nsecurity that urgently needs to rise up in the industry\u2019s priority list. Left\nunchecked, ad fraud will choke mobile advertising, erode trust in operators and\nlead to higher tariffs for users\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The effects\nof mobile ad fraud are particularly damaging in emerging markets where data\ncosts are significantly higher. As evidenced from detailed data presented from\nfive such markets including Brazil and South Africa fraud rates in most cases\nexceed the 90% mark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Upstream\u2019s\nreport highlights consumers in emerging markets are more vulnerable to digital\nfraud; they are unaware of the dangers as they often go online for the first\ntime via their mobile devices and data depletion caused by malware has a much\ngreater effect on them due to the high cost of data in their countries. In\nAfrica, 1 GB of data costs prepaid mobile subscribers the equivalent of 16\nhours of work at minimum wage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA key part\nof successfully tackling mobile fraud is awareness,\u201d added Maniatis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSomething\nthat the whole industry, surprisingly, lacks. With all indicators pointing that\nits value will grow in the hundreds of billions in the next three years, we\ncannot afford to remain idle. This is the main reason we steadily and openly\nshare all our findings with the whole community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMobile ad\nfraud remains a hidden threat for most consumers. It usually goes undetected\nand is not high on people\u2019s agendas when choosing apps. However, as the industry\ndelays its response, consumers should take steps to stay safe from mobile ad\nfraud this year. For example, by using anti-malware services like Play Protect,\nby only downloading from the official Play store after checking reviews\ncarefully and keeping a close check on bills for unwanted subscriptions or\ncharges.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A total of 93% of total mobile transactions in 20 countries were blocked as fraudulent in 2019, according to a report on the state of malware and mobile ad fraud released by mobile technology company, Upstream. The Invisible Digital Threat data is based on deployments of Upstream\u2019s Secure-D full-stack anti-fraud platform that that detects and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":37124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,48,6617,93],"tags":[14297,14298,14299,3226,1257,14300,1792,4105,14301,1844,14302,14303,14304,14305,14306,14307],"class_list":["post-37086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-security","category-mobile","category-research","category-top-stories","tag-4shared","tag-ai-type","tag-alcatel","tag-android","tag-cybercriminals","tag-dimitris-maniatis","tag-google","tag-google-play","tag-invisible-digital-threat","tag-malware","tag-play-protect","tag-secure-d","tag-snaptube","tag-upstream","tag-vidmate","tag-weather-forecast"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37095,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37086\/revisions\/37095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}