Since the beginning of the year, a Japanese one-click fraud campaign has continued to wreak havoc on Google Play. The scammers have published approximately 700 apps in total since the end of January. The apps are published on a daily basis and the scammers have invested around US$4,000 in order to pay the US$25 developer fee to publish apps on Google Play.
Dealing with the fraudulent apps has really become a game of cat and mouse. Once the apps are removed from Google Play, the scammers simply publish more under new developer accounts. These are again removed shortly afterwards, but the scammers simply continue to publish more. Most of the apps are removed on the date of publication, but some, especially those published over weekends, tend to have a longer life and in some cases have download numbers in the triple digits. The scam attempts to lure users interested in adult videos to a site that attempts to trick them into registering for a paid service. Even if only one user falls for the scam and pays, that’s JPY99,800 (around US$1,000 at the current exchange rate) in the pocket for the scammers, which also means they can make more money by creating even more developers accounts to publish more fraudulent apps.
Read more: http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/japanese-one-click-fraud-google-play-leads-data-stealing-app
