People are often cheated in matters of banking and credit card frauds, now and then. Spam calls and emails were the usual modes of cheating unless a group of fraudsters tried to dupe credit card holders through fake mobile banking apps, recently. The users of three banking corporations in India were, reportedly, their recent victims.

With newer technologies taking centre-stage in people’s lives, it seems that the manner of duping and cheating people, in the matter of credit card frauds, has seen an upgrade too. A group of attackers, recently, floated the fake versions of the mobile-banking applications of three banks, i.e. ICICI Bank, RBL Bank, and HDFC Bank, on Google Play Store to extract their confidential (account) details.

The group used the fake versions of mobile apps, which was aimed to collect sensitive information such as account number, CVV, expiration dates, and the names of account holders – all such information which are required to make a transaction.

As per a report by ETSET, last week mentioned that the mentioned apps were targeted towards increasing the credit limit of the existing credit card holders. To make matters worse, the information was not only stolen but also was released online.

The (fake) mobile apps were floated on Play Store during the months of June and July. They were withdrawn one after the other, and all the three apps were traced to one perpetrator only.

The banking institutions have been continuously conducting campaigns about avoiding any such lucrative offers, i.e. anything that pertains to reveal an individual’s personal information or the card details to avail any service, facility, or a product.

On the other hand, the web-giant Google has also been criticised for their laxity and complacency in screening the applications before they are made available on Play Store. However, the search-engine giant has been on a mission-mode to remove malicious apps and games from their platform for a long time now.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 30, 2018 11:27 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).