9 apps that scam and steal users' Facebook accounts

According to a report from security researchers, there are 9 Android apps on the Play Store created with the purpose of tricking users and stealing their Facebook accounts. These 9 apps have a total of nearly 7 million downloads on the Play Store.

According to security firm Dr. Web, to make users less alert and more confident, the bad guys have designed these fraudulent applications with complete, usable features such as photo editing, deleting redundant files or training instructions. These apps all run ads, and require users to log in to their Facebook account to turn off ads.

After the user logs into their Facebook account, the application will collect the name, password, cookies from that login session and send it to the hacker. By doing this, the hacker can steal the user's account of any service as long as they choose to log in to the account to turn off the ads.

The analysis of Dr. Web says that with this approach, hackers can steal any user's account, as long as they give that option to turn off ads.

9 apps that scam and steal users' Facebook accounts Picture 1

The list of 9 applications that steal users' Facebook accounts include:

1. App Lock Keep
2. App Lock Manager
3. Horoscope Daily
4. Horoscope Pi
5. Inwell Fitness
6. Lockit Master
7. PIP Photo
8. Processing Photo
9. Rubbish Cleaner

The most popular is the PIP Photo app, which has been downloaded 5.8 million times.

After receiving reports from security researchers, Google removed all 9 of these apps from the Play Store and banned the developers behind the apps from uploading new apps to the store.

However, Google's censorship policy is too lenient, developers only need to pay a fee of 25 USD to register an account. Therefore, to ensure safety, to avoid downloading fake applications, users should be cautious before logging into their accounts anywhere.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 05 July 2021