Comment by epolanski
20 days ago
I know literally 0, 0 people who have installed malwares or had their smartphones hacked in their life times.
The very few I know that have had this happen where all computer users, and virtually all victims of social hacking such as "hey, I'm from IT department, sending you an email, could you please...". A friend of mine exposed sensible data of thousands of customers of her bank like this.
well, as someone working in a department that also has Fraud detection responsibilities, the amount of users that lose tons of money because of scam apps, spoofed apps, identity stealing apps, is big. Like insanely big. I am all for it that these apps get significantly harder for the average joe to install or run on their phones.
It's a considerable number well into the 8 figures $/year that we have to cover (Granted this number is not specifically smartphones, also includes desktops, but I know smartphones is the bigger piece nowadays.)
(insuring this is near impossible, there is always a large part risk we have to pay ourselves and cannot cede to a reinsurer)
The problem isn't play protect or whatever the fuck, because 80% of the play store is malware, adware, and spyware anyway.
The problem is actually Google and other big tech.
Let's consider: why are users installing so many apps?
Because, on desktop, this doesn't happen. We don't ask people to download and run an EXE to look at their friends funny cat photos. No, we open the web browser.
The reason we have so many apps on mobile is because we require the malware. Google requires the malware. We need to be able to run privileged and unsandboxed code on users devices and this is the world that Apple and Google have created.
Users shouldn't be fucking downloading apps for 90% of the stuff they do anyway - including the non malicious apps! But they do, because they have no choice.
Think about it. Provide a web interface and miss out on juicy spyware? Or install executables on your customers systems? Apps are far too enticing for big tech.
it's very common in india
… who know about it.
> scamming society on billions
so somehow my friends and family got hacked, lost money but don't know about it?
actually i know of one case where my mom got billed for airbnb even tho she didn't book the ticket but pretty sure I had her password in a text file so might've been me that got hacked on my PC.
Airbnb refunded her and then had no more issues. So 1 case in my entire life and it probably wasn't on a mobile device.
You can get hacked without losing money. If you devices gets used in a bot net, if your computer gets used to mine crypto, etc. Your work files gets stolen by hackers and sold to competitors in china, etc.
All those are things normal people wont notice.
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