Google has removed eight suspected fraudulent mobile apps from its Play Store, which deceive cryptocurrency enthusiasts by charging illegal cloud mining services.
Fraudulent mobile applications have now become a popular way to mislead careless users with a high success rate.Trend Micro’s latest Research Eight Android apps were discovered that charge monthly fees under the false pretense of running legitimate cloud mining services to take advantage of cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Further analysis of the matter revealed that malicious apps hosted by Google—disguised as crypto mining apps—deceive users to watch paid advertisements and pay for non-existent cloud mining services.
According to the report, users not only need to pay a monthly fee of about 15 US dollars, but also need to pay more to support “improvement of mining capacity.” In addition, some applications require users to pay in advance.
According to reports, fraudulent crypto applications include mining services such as BitFunds, Bitcoin Miner, Daily Bitcoin Rewards, Crypto Holic, MineBit Pro, Bitcoin 2021 and Ethereum (ETH)-Pool Mining Cloud. The list also includes an encrypted wallet service called Bitcoin (BTC)-mining pool mining cloud wallet.
Although the aforementioned findings have been reported to Google Play and removed from the Play Store, Trend Micro claims to have discovered many other fraudulent applications that have been downloaded more than 100,000 times.Company Data Shows that there are still more than 120 counterfeit apps in the Play Store:
“These apps do not have cryptocurrency mining capabilities and deceive users to watch in-app advertisements. From July 2020 to July 2021, they have affected more than 4,500 users worldwide.”
Related: With the effective of the new policy, Google re-launched encrypted ads
On August 3, Google revised its advertising policy to allow cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet services to promote its products to Google users. As part of this drive, Advertisers need to register The Financial Crime Law Enforcement Network serves as a “money service business, and at least one state is a money transfer agency, or a federal or state chartered banking entity.”
However, established policies prevent initial coin offerings, businesses and celebrities Shilling cryptocurrency. On the other hand, the social media giants TikTok has resorted to a total ban Encrypted advertising on its platform, this move Similar to Google’s previous policy in 2018.
