Researchers have found about 300 mobile loan applications on Google Play and the Apple App Store that exhibit predatory behavior such as exfiltrating excessive user data from mobile devices and harassing borrowers for repayment.
These mobile loan applications were mainly found in Southeast Asian and African countries, as well as India, Colombia, and Mexico. They offer quick, fully digital loan approvals with reasonable loan terms. But in reality, they exploit victims’ desire for quick cash to ensnare borrowers into predatory loan contracts and require them to grant access to sensitive information such as contacts and SMS messages.
“In addition to predatory requests for excessive permissions, many of the loan operators display scam-like actions,” the report noted.
The report says that a number of users have reported that their loans come with hidden fees, high interest rates, and repayment terms that are much less favorable than what is posted on the app stores.
“We also found evidence that the data exfiltrated from devices are sometimes used to pressure for repayment, either by harassing the customers themselves or their contacts,” the Lookout report stated.
The researchers found that all the predatory loan apps were found in developing countries. These are specifically targeting users in Colombia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Thailand, and Uganda.
In total, Lookout researchers uncovered 251 Android apps on the Google Play store with over 15 million collective downloads. They also identified 35 apps on the Apple App Store that were in the top 100 finance apps in their regional stores.
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