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Consumers are failing to spot spoof mobile banking apps

Matthew Cook
March 13, 2018

Mobile banking trojans will be the biggest threat to consumers in 2018 according to new research from internet security firm, Avast.

The new research of 40,000 consumers from the UK and 11 other countries around the world found that people in that 14 per cent of UK responders couldn’t recognise a fake mobile banking app interface.

Alongside those findings, 65 per cent of respondents in the UK thought the official banking app was the fraudulent one, seven per cent more than the global average of 58 per cent.

Thirty nine per cent of the respondents from the UK said that they use mobile bankings applications with 77 per cent saying that they are more worried about having money stolen from their online bank account than losing their wallet or purse.

Globally around two in five use mobile banking applications. In the UK the percentage using banking apps dips slightly to 39 per cent in the UK with 34 per cent electing not to use them due to security concerns.

Speaking to Mobile News Avast senior vice president and general manager Gagan Singh (pictured above) said that these trojans were first detected late last year.

He added: “When you look at mobile security threats there is a new one that dominates every year.

“Last year ransomware was a big deal but what we have been noticing since the second half of last year is a rise in banking trojans and essentially, what it is is a malware that infects your mobile device and overlays a screen on banking apps that pretends to be the application and steals your financials.

“There has been an increase in usage of online banking because it’s convenient. So this is a significant concern for us and our users but this is an increasing problem and I think it will dominate ransomeware over the next year.”

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