Crack down on fake APP fraud

Our reporter Qian Qingni

Recently, police in many places have received reports that some criminals have published false text messages to induce users to download counterfeit installments and implement fraud. Guangzhou Public Security has recently issued a safety reminder with the installment of Lexin: If you receive a questionable text message, please call 110 or installment customer service 95730 for consultation. In phases, Lezheng has jointly supervised law enforcement agencies to carry out governance actions against the black industry chain of counterfeit APPs. At present, dozens of suspected illegal SMS service providers have been taken away by the police for investigation.

Since September last year, counterfeit APP scams have shown a straight upward trend. Apart from installments, micro-loans, Ant Huabei, 360 Finance and other Internet platforms and major bank credit card centers have not been able to escape the fate of being counterfeited. Major platforms have issued statements to remind counterfeit APP telecommunications fraud, and introduced various measures to protect users' safety.

According to 360 Financial Anti-fraud Lab data, in a single fraud case, the victim was continuously scamed to account for 32.8%. The analysis believes that this is related to the fraudulent gangs concocting serial charges.

According to the latest "Analysis Report of Fake Loan APP Telecommunication Fraud During the Epidemic" released by 360 Financial Anti-Fraud Lab and 360 Mobile Guardian, among the names of victims who were scammed, the margin, thaw fee and cost of labor were ranked in the top three, respectively 27.7%, 19.3% and 18.1%.

Generally, the names, icons, and functional experiences of high imitation APP and regular APP are very similar, which is difficult for most users to distinguish. According to the monitoring data released by the National Internet Financial Risk Analysis Technology Platform, as of the end of February of this year, 48,100 Internet financial counterfeit websites were found, with 120,000 victim users; 2801 Internet financial counterfeit APPs, with 33.437 million downloads of counterfeit APPs.

Although the fraud of counterfeit lending APP continues to generate new tricks, the core is still to defraud money through "charge before lending. In this regard, 360 Financial Anti-Fraud Lab summarized the "three must" anti-fraud principles: First, the formal online loan platform will not charge any fees in the credit review. The second is to choose the official official software when downloading the APP. The third is that the customer service of the regular online loan platform will not contact the user through unofficial channels. Never transfer funds to strange personal accounts.

To combat telecommunications fraud, it is obviously not enough to rely solely on public vigilance. "In the screening of financial products or services, it is still not possible to effectively identify the legal compliance of financial platforms or financial apps. The punishment of counterfeit apps requires the participation of law enforcement, supervision, industry associations and communication departments to form a blockade of criminal behavior. "Ouyang Rihui, deputy dean of the China Internet Economics Research Institute of Central University of Finance and Economics, said.

However, the Economic Daily reporter learned that because many fraudulent gangs are abroad, it is difficult to implement arrests. Therefore, at this stage, the police will focus on cracking down on the short message service providers that provide services for them. It is working with the victimized platforms such as Meituan to combat related illegal crimes and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.

Qian Qingni