by AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – THE Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region is among the top three regions prone to mobile financial scam.
According to Kaspersky, throughout 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, 14 percent of installs of potentially unwanted mobile financial apps on Android phones were made by users in the region.
META ranks third behind Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Latin American (LATAM) zones in terms of the number of installs of such apps.
As Android holds a dominant market share of 78 percent in the Middle East, 80 percent in Africa and 70 percent in Turkiye, cyber threats for this mobile operating system remain persistent.
Kaspersky assured that its experts continuously monitor the mobile threat landscape and track threat trends to provide the most up-to-date intelligence about the potential dangers.
“The threat landscape evolves, and mobile financial cyberthreats become more sophisticated and pervasive,” commented Igor Golovin, Malware Analyst at Kaspersky.
He explained that while downloading smartphone apps from official app stores is less risky than obtaining them from elsewhere, apps could still request the user to give access to different types of personal data that could then be misused.
“As smartphones are used to store an increasing amount of personal data, granting access to it raises security concerns and places additional demand on the security of mobile devices and privacy-preserving ways of storing the data,” Golovin added.
Kaspersky recommends that it is safer to download apps only from official stores like Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store and Google Play.
A reliable security solution can help detect malicious apps and adware.
– CAJ News