How To Spot Bad Apps

SECURITY CORRESPONDENT DANIEL BARDSLEY SPEAKS TO INDUSTRY EXPERTS ON HOW END-USERS CAN STEER CLEAR OF MALICIOUS MOBILE APPLICATIONS.

- Igor Muttik, Dr Tom Chothia

Over the holiday season at the end of last year, countless people around the world were given new Amazon Alexa virtual assistant devices – and were keen to try them out.

Many went on to the Apple App Store to download a mobile phone app that would show them how to configure their shiny new piece of kit.

There waiting for them was a free app, “Setup for Amazon Alexa”, that sounded perfect.

Many iOS phone users downloaded the app, making it, at one point, one of the 100 most popular free apps.

However, all was not as it should have been.

Many of the thousands who gave the app a rating complained that it failed to work properly, leaving them unable to operate their precious Alexas.

What is more, some were worried that had made themselves vulnerable to being hacked, as they had provided their device serial number, IP address and other details.

Following a flurry of complaints and multiple news stories, Apple ejected the errant app from its official store.

Android phone users to have been plagued by fraudulent apps, thousands of which have come and gone over the years.

Many are simply annoying because of the advertisements associated with them, while others create much bigger problems.

According to Dr. Tom Chothia, a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, “by far” the majority of bad apps will either be stealing personal data from users or plaguing them with advertisements. Such apps are often “relatively low impact” in their effects.

“The vast majority of apps out there are making money advertising to people who don’t want to be advertised to. Apps that try to steal money are relatively uncommon,” he says.

Bad apps are often put into one of two categories.