Low Battery, Heavy Data Usage On Smartphone Consistently? The Reason Is This Evil Bot
Oracle has found that the infected apps have been downloaded millions of times
Often, you must have felt that your smartphone’s battery is draining out, and lot more data is being consumed that you expected. You must have thought that maybe your smartphone has become old and you need a replacement.
Or that your must have consumed more data, and forgot about that.
What if you were being manipulated, and used by a bot? What if that bot drained your battery, and consumed not 1 or 2 but whooping 10 GB of data per month, without your consent?
Oracle has found the reason for this, and the culprit as well.
DrainerBot Has Affected 10 Million Android Users
As per Oracle’s recent study, a bot named DrainerBot is the reason why more than 10 million Android users experienced low battery, and lost tons of GBs, without consent.
The origin of this bot has been traced to a Dutch company called Tapcore, which specializes in stopping app piracy, ironically.
And the root of this problem is: Ad fraud in mobile apps.
The Modus Operandi Of DrainerBot
The bot has been designed to fool the mobile user, and to make money by showing invisible ads to them.
This is how it works: Say, you have downloaded an app, say chess game app, which is infected by the DrainerBot. Now, unknown to you, the bot will download tons of video advertisements, and show it in an invisible mode to you, the app user.
This way, the bot makes money for its creator, and you, the app user loses GBs per month.
Since the video ads are continuously running, your battery gets drained out as well.
DrainerBot Is Evil & A Scam
Such infected apps have been downloaded millions of times, and millions of Android users may have been affected.
This not only affects the apps, and their users, but also makes fool of the advertisers who are spending money on the ads: No one watched the ads, but still they are paying for them.
Eric Roza, senior vice president at Oracle admitted that the scale at which this scam has been working for years is unprecedented.
He said, “This is a crime with three layers of victims. I hadn’t seen anything like this before.”
Tapcore, which specializes in extracting money from those users who have illegally downloaded an app, has said that they have no role in this whole scam.
Meanwhile, Google has rightfully blacklisted all such infected apps from the Play store. Most of the apps are no longer available now.
Google said in a statement, “Google Play developer policies prohibit deceptive and malicious behaviour on our platform. If an app violates our policies, we take action,”
We will keep you updated, as more details come in.
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