Περισσότεροι από 3,5 εκατομμύρια χρήστες συσκευών με iOS έχουν εγκαταστήσει εφαρμογές “fleeceware” στις συσκευές τους, προειδοποιεί η βρετανική εταιρεία ασφάλειας Sophos in this week's post.
The term fleeceware is a new addition to the phraseology of cyber security and describes applications involved in a new form of cyber fraud.
How fleeceware applications work
Google and Apple's App Stores allow application developers to create trial applications (free for a limited time).
Οι χρήστες μπορούν να εγκαταστήσουν αυτές τις εφαρμογές για να τις δοκιμάσουν αλλά δίνουν την άδεια να επιβαρυνθούν το ποσό από το λογαριασμό τους στο Play Store ή του App Store. Μόλις λήξει η δοκιμαστική περίοδος, ο χρήστης χρεώνεται αυτόματα στην κάρτα του και για να συνεχίσει να uses application.
Fleeceware applications benefit from the fact that application developers can charge users even when they uninstall the application from their devices.
The policies in the App Stores allow developers to have their own testing cancellation steps, and some of them do not interpret theinstallation of the app as a trial cancellation and force users to pay or go through complicated procedures.
Sophos in one yesterday's post states that he discovered such applications in App Store Apple.
"As we've seen before, most of these fleeceware applications are image editors, horoscopes, QR code / barcode scanners and face filtering applications," said Sophos mobile malware analyst Jagadeesh Chandraiah, who has been looking for fleeceware applications since last year.
The researcher reports that he has identified 32 iOS apps (see table at the end of this article) that charge up to $ 30 a month or $ 9 a week for simple features that are usually available for free. Some of these amounts seem small, but reach $ 360 to $ 468 per year.
To protect yourself, you should check to see if there is a subscription on your device:
On Android devices:
Open the Play Store and see if you use the right Google Account.
Click on the hamburger menu icon and select Subscriptions.
Select the subscription you want to cancel and click on Cancel subscription.
On iOS devices:
Open Settings, click on your name and then click on Subscriptions.
Select the subscription you want to manage. Cancel Subscription. If you do not see Cancel Subscription, it has already been canceled.
List of applications
