Android users at risk from e-commerce fraudsters in China
Staff Reporter
2015-02-01
A smartphone user shopping online. (File photo/CNS)
With the Chinese New Year holiday less than three weeks away, many Chinese migrant workers have been using their mobile phones to buy tickets and shop for goods needed for the lunar holidays.
As the use of e-commerce increases, however, online shopping fraud is also on the rise, and Trojans and phishing sites have become widespread, with Android users being the high-risk groups, Beijing Youth Daily reports.
According to Tencent's statistics, Android users in Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are the highest-risk groups, with users there reportedly being the biggest victims of online shopping fraud, Trojans and phishing sites which steal money from their bank accounts.
Police have reminded citizens to be careful when shopping online, and have warned tourists about counterfeit travel and flight ticket websites and apps. After paying for tickets, customers receive calls from people posing as customer service staffers from numbers beginning with 400 codes, who say that due to weather changes, the flights have been cancelled and that they need to refund the customers. When the customers try to receive refunds via the ATM operations, the deposits in their bank accounts go missing.
Tencent said the three biggest problems are with online refunds, Trojans and phishing websites and the company reminded mobile phone users to be careful when conducting online shopping. Tencent last year teamed up with police to crack down on several fraudsters.
Most of the viruses are currently targeting Android users, as Android is an open system based on Linux, giving room for manipulation by fraudsters when conducting online shopping and payments.
According to Tencent's statistics, new mobile-end payment viruses totaled 137,000 in 2014, three times the number in 2013, with a daily average of 42,700 mobile phones being infected by such viruses.
The electronic markets and mobile phone forums are still the main channels for spreading viruses, accounting for 21% and 20% of the total, respectively, followed by bundled software, built-in viruses and two-dimensional barcodes.
The most common method in 2014 was to steal access to short message service (SMS), which can grant fraudsters access to users' bank card numbers, identification numbers and cell numbers, and allows them to access money in bank accounts and third-party payment accounts.
