Thousands of fake apps flood the social networks

According to Cheetah Mobile Threat Lab, thousands of fake social networking apps are tricking users into giving away their personal info.

In less than a year, cheetah has detected 15,000 fake social networking apps. Facebook saw itself top the list with 8,107 phony apps. WhatsApp was a close second with 3,246 clones while Twitter topped out at 2,580.

The apps where detected between January and August of 2014. Malysia, Vietnam and Russia are the countries most affected.

Among other problems they cause, sending and receiving SMS messages are part of the apps repertoire. The apps create a premium SMS service which bills your wireless account and sends it to the pocket of the attackers. If you have a pre-paid account, the money is immediately taken from your account.

Sometimes the apps go after your personal info. When you log into your social network, the attackers get the info. Such info could allow the attackers to impersonate victims online and access any service connected to the social media site.

First, according to Cheetah, the apps have far fewer permissions than their counterparts. And second, they tend to be much, much smaller that the real app. They may only be 1MB whereas the real app would run 20 to 300MBs.

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