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Six men have been arrested for allegedly creating a virus disguised as a smartphone app that illegally charged users vast amounts of money without their permission when they downloaded videos form an adult site, police said Friday.
The fraud came to light after a man in his 50s was charged around 100,000 yen after using the app, which is ostensibly designed to link to adult videos, NTV reported. Police say that when the app is opened it charges the user's credit card every five minutes.
Police claim the app, which was developed by a group led by 45-year-old Chitoru Manago, also installed a virus on users' devices, which leaked personal information to its developers.
The group responsible for the app have been arrested on a charge of distributing a virus. Police say this is Japan's first known case of a crime involving a smartphone app virus, NTV reported.
© Japan Today
5 Comments
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nath
Good job!!!
scoobydoo
Since you can't install apps without the appstore or whatever, how did these get on the phones? Surely not every app got onto a phone that was jail broken. Shows that google and apple are not auditing the apps they charge the developers for.
REMzzz
Not the first time Android phones have a "trojan horse" app problem. But whoever wrote and uploaded it, is an idiot.
IncenseAndPeppermints
They probably thought people would be too embarrassed to report it, a sort of blackmail scheme really but more importantly, fraud.
This is yet another example where I don't find new legislation targeting computers and the internet to actually be necessary. They could have just as easily been arrested for fraud. Does it matter if fraud is committed using pen and paper, smoke signals, or computer viruses? I don't think so.
Paul Kangas
None of the phones hit were Apple.