Scammers go into holiday line with apps

Scammers are making use of travel packages, electronics and fuel discounts to lure people to download virus-infected mobile applications to take control of phones and then scoop cash from bank accounts.

Police said they have received reports of at least six cases since September, involving HK$680,000 in losses.

Each of the six cases saw victims downloading virus-infected mobile applications - and paying for it.

Police also said scammers create fake apps and request users to enter their bank account information as login credentials.

Victims were attracted by advertisements on social media platforms or unsolicited WhatsApp messages. They were subsequently deceived into downloading apps such as 88 Grocery Store on their Android phones.

And online banking deposits were transferred after victims entered their bank account information.

In one case a middle-aged man came across a Facebook page called "Golden Europe Travel," which offered discounted holiday packages. He contacted a supposed customer service officer through WhatsApp. That person sent him a link and instructed him to instal the "Hong Kong and Macau Mall" app and to register as a member to enjoy discounts.

The man downloaded the app and entered his bank account login credentials. And then HK$240,000 was transferred out of his account.

Police said the virus-infected app contains a malicious code. Once instaled and granted full operating permissions by a user, hackers can control the phone remotely, access a user's SMS messages, capture keystrokes and execute any app instaled on the phone.

"Hackers periodically create various social media pages and change the names of virus-infected apps," police warned on Facebook.

"They even package the virus-infected apps as different types of tools, such as video players."

Some people said they had fallen victim to such scams and found Facebook slow to act in some cases.

Police advise people not to download mobile apps from unofficial sources and to avoid granting questionable permissions to apps.

If there is suspicion of malware instalation then people should restore a phone to its factory settings to remove the malicious code.

And if anyone has doubts or suspicions about a communication they can assess the risk immediately by entering the page name, URL, or phone number into the Scameter, which is a one-stop scam and pitfall search engine provided by police on the CyberDefender website (https://cyberdefender.hk) or by using the mobile application Scameter.