If you’re like many other shoppers, you enjoy the freedom of shopping from anywhere using a mobile device. Legitimate stores offer many apps that help you find the best deals for your holiday shopping, but watch out for frauds. Several fraudulent apps claiming to help users find sales and deals are actually stealing data instead. If you’re an avid deal shopper, here are some tips to avoid being a victim of phishing or other digital theft.
Black Friday saw the first wave of fraudulent apps. An Amazon Black Friday deals app was found on Amazon’s own site. The app promised to help shoppers find the best sales, but instead it downloaded a third application that then stole user data. The download URL looked like a legitimate Amazon domain to the untrained eye, but look more closely and it was actually a subdomain with the Amazon name.
The question is – how do you know when an app is fraudulent?
Only Download Official Apps
Every major brand has its own app in the official stores. If you see an app that has the brand name but isn’t the official app, think twice about installing it. To be sure, you can open the official site in your tablet or mobile device. Most brands refer you to their app when they detect that you’re using a mobile device. If they don’t recommend their app, search their site for an app link to download it from the official app store. Any brand that creates a new app will provide a link or some kind of press announcing that they’ve created one for the holidays.
Does the App Have No Reviews or Comments?
Malware writers create new apps each year, because any fraudulent app they upload is removed eventually from the store. An official app has been in the app store for years, so there are plenty of reviews from users. Just take a look at Amazon’s app, for instance. It has over 346,000 reviews from its users. A fraudulent app might have the same logo and design, but it will have few reviews or comments. If it has any at all, they are probably from angry users or ones who have figured out that it’s a phishing app.
How Many Downloads Does the App Have?
Another sign that there is something amiss is when the number of installs is extremely low. Looking at the official Amazon app again, it has over 10 million installations. A new app would obviously have very few installations. Even if the brand released a new app, it would have several hundreds and even thousands of installs fairly quickly. Again, if the app looks official, but it looks suspicious, go to the brand website or even contact their customer service to ask.
What Happens If I’ve Downloaded a Suspicious App?
If you’ve downloaded the app, the first thing to do is remove access to sensitive information. Mobile device operating systems make app creators ask for permission before they can access your data. If the app asks you for data such as SMS or contacts, you should be suspicious. If you’ve already given access, Android and iOS devices let you revoke the access in the settings. Of course after you revoke access, you want to delete the app as soon as possible.
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