About a year ago, security companies began to notice a new kind of scam sneaking around the Google Play store. Called one-click fraud apps, these apps promised to deliver a titillating pornographic experience, but were really vehicles to part victims from their cash as quickly as possible. Now the scam is back, and bigger than ever.

Too Good To Be True

One-click fraud begins when users search for apps on Google Play, in this case pornographic Japanese applications. Symantec security response manager Satnam Narang explained, "As soon as you click it [the app], it launches these porn sites. There's no actual content in the applications."

These porn sites try to persuade victims to sign up for some kind of service. In the case of the pornographic Japanese apps Symantec has seen, the service the sites claim to provide costs around 99,000 yen or $1,000. This is similar to the Text Girly scam, which used a multi-step deception to try and get victims to sign up for an adult video chatting website.

It seems unlikely that the scammers could expect to get a lot of signups with such a high price tag. "I think it's the affiliate money," said Narang, who cautioned that this was only his gut feeling. However, it seems probable since affiliates will sometimes pay scammers for clicks and pageviews, an issue we've discussed in the past.

"We are now seeing multiple developers fiercely publishing apps in bulk on a daily basis," wrote Symantec's Joji Hamada in a blog post yesterday. "We have so far confirmed over 200 of these fraudulent apps published by over 50 developers, although it is likely that more exist."

Though the apps have been downloaded over 5,000 times, Narang said it was difficult to say how much money had been generated for the scammers, or how many signed up for the $1,000 dollar "service."

Sneaking By

Because they have virtually no content one-click fraud apps require few, if any, special permissions. Some malware apps have lengthy and odd permission requests which can tip users off to their malicious nature.

Downloaders also might not be as on-guard because of the somewhat clandestine nature of pornographic apps. The victims are likely expecting a somewhat shifty product and might not respond to the warning signs of malware as a result. After all, the apps are promising to deliver something the victim is quite keen to get.

Use Protection

The good news is that this scam as described is, at most, inconvenient for its targets. However, it's no small leap of the imagination to see how it could be used to harvest personal information, or even deliver malware. It's also a reminder that although Google Play has thousands of quality apps, it's not free from scams or malware.

As always, mobile security software can provide some protection, but so can common sense: be wary of deals that seem too good to be true, and stick to sources you trust—either app stores or developers—before you install their software.

Image via Symantec

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