FBI Warns Apple, Google, Microsoft Users – Don’t Install These Apps

It starts with a simple phone call, a text, a pop-up – but ends with a life-changing loss. It has now become a dangerous enough threat that Google has updated Android to prevent its users from becoming victims. There are many warnings about apps you shouldn’t install on your smartphone, tablet, or laptop, and many times there are nuances about how to tell if an app is safe or not. This is much simpler – in this case, you have to never install these apps.

The FBI has dubbed this threat the “Hacker Phantom” and made the news again this week, with the bureau warning that it’s “growing rapidly” and that “scammers don’t discriminate — they want money from whoever they can get. As As I reported a few weeks ago, it’s also an international threat, and it’s proving terribly compelling for fraudsters to redouble their efforts to target more people as the money continues to roll in.

The concept of operations is simple, as the FBI explains. “Fraudsters impersonate bank representatives to convince victims that hackers have penetrated their financial account. Victims are urged to move their money quickly to protect their assets. In reality, there was never a hacker, and the money that was transferred is now completely controlled by the fraudster.”

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There are variations on this theme, as you’d expect. We see attacks from scammers pretending to be tech support representatives appear regularly. But the most effective attack is the banking attack. You will likely end up talking to a convincing, albeit fake, bank representative who helps you transfer your money from the “hacked” account to a new secure account to stop making fraudulent transactions to steal the money yours. You are told that this is urgent and happening in real time, giving you no time to think. In reality, you are moving your money into an account controlled by the fraudster.

While these attacks may simply ask you to approve a transaction within your banking app, many of the calls “direct the victim to download a software program that allows the fraudster remote access to the victim’s computer.” You’re told this is to stop the hacker in their tracks – the hacker that doesn’t exist of course. “The scammer asks the victim to open their financial accounts to determine if there have been any unauthorized charges – a tactic to allow the scammer to determine which financial account is most profitable to target. The fraudster informs the victim that they will receive a call from that financial institution’s fraud department with further instructions.”

The rules for staying safe are stupidly simple.

1. Never install an app when a supposed tech support or banking individual who contacted you sends you a link or directs you to a website.
2. Your bank or credit card company will never call and ask for your security credentials. If someone does, you always have the right to call them back through the usual channels to make sure they work for the establishment they claim.
3. never EVER move money anywhere on the word of someone who contacted you on the phone. This will never be a real solution. If they work for the bank as they say, they can stop the transaction – think twice.

Google has added call fraud protection to its latest Android system that can protect you in multiple ways. It can put artificial intelligence in the device to listen in on calls and alert when it appears to be a scam as well – for example, the supposed bank representative asking you to make a transaction. And from an application perspective, how Android Authority explains, it will “prevent users from disabling Google Play Protect during voice calls to prevent criminals from tricking users into installing malicious apps on their devices.”

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In the absence of these updates, you should never, EVER install an application on your phone, desktop or laptop if you have been asked to do so by a technical support or bank representative. The only exception is when you’ve contacted technical or product support using publicly advertised channels and they ask you to use an app to send photos or run a live video link or diagnose a system fault. But you need to make sure that you have contacted them and it is not from any kind of inbound contact.

The full FBI advice to keep Phantom Hackers at bay is as follows; if you believe you have been the victim of such a crime, you may report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which can be found at www.ic3.gov.

• Do not download software at the request of an unknown person who contacted you.
• Do not click on unsolicited pop-ups, links sent via text messages, email links or attachments.
• Do not contact the phone number provided in a pop-up, text or email.
• Do not allow an unknown person who contacted you to have control of your computer.