93,000 users scammed into buying fake cryptocurrency mining apps – Bitcoin News

Thousands of users have been scammed into buying fake Android cryptocurrency mining apps, according to a California security firm. These apps are advertised as a way to make money from mining cryptocurrencies, but in reality they have no function. Instead, they charge the user for supposed improvements and enhancements to improve their currency throughput.

93K users cheated

Scammers have tricked more than 93,000 users by selling them fake cryptocurrency apps through the Google Play Store. These numbers come from the latest report from Lookout, a California-based security company. According to the report, the apps mimick a front end for cloud mining platforms. The business model of these apps is to trick users into believing that they are really mining cryptocurrencies.

In fact, the apps don’t do anything. Compared to similar apps that tap private data from their buyers, these are more subtle. This has allowed some of them to go undetected in Google’s Play Store. Of the 175 apps recognized by Lookout, 25 were available in the Play Store and the other could be downloaded from third-party markets.

All of these paid apps come with costly upgrades and subscription models that are purported to improve mining performance. This is how scammers monetize these apps. Users are tricked into believing that the apps are really mining currency by displaying fake numbers. But then they’ll get an error message when they try to make withdrawals.

Two classes: Cloudscam and Bitscam

Lookout has divided these apps into two main groups: Clouscam and Bitscam. The main difference between these two is that Bitscam apps also accept payments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Cloudscam apps only accept Google payments. Lookout estimates that customers lost at least $ 350,000 investing in these apps.

Google has removed the reported apps from the Play Store. However, these are still available from third-party marketplaces. The new boom the cryptocurrency industry is experiencing is making inexperienced people easy targets for scammers. While Google already knows this, there may still be dozens or even hundreds of apps lurking in the Google Play Store.

Lookout advises new investors to do due diligence before buying any cryptocurrency mining app. Scammers know that inexperienced users are now entering the cryptocurrency market in droves and they will try to take advantage of this boom. The security company recommends knowing the developers of these apps before buying, installing them only from the official app, and reading the user reviews of the app to check for anomalies.

What do you think of these mining scams? Let us know in the comments section below.

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