Malware scams have been making headlines recently. This is when bad actors instal malicious apps into your phone while pretending to offer cheap durian, mooncake or roast duck deals.
From January to August alone, more than 1,400 victims have lost over $20.6 million to these malware scams. A notable portion of these victims are silvers, some of whom have lost their entire retirement savings after fraudsters gained access to their banking credentials.
The similarity between these victims? Their phones all run on Google’s Android operating system (OS), which allows for downloading and installing apps from sources other than the official Google Play Store. This is known as sideloading.
This openness provides greater flexibility and customisation for Android phones, which many users appreciate.
In fact, many silvers have probably been using this feature for many years unknowingly, when they instal Singapore Pools’ mobile lottery app directly from the state-owned lottery operator’s website. (Singapore is not on Google’s list of countries that can facilitate online gambling, hence the app’s exclusion.)
Unfortunately, and obviously, the answer isn’t as simple as that.
There’s a simple reason for that – the Android OS is available on devices by many more smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, Oppo and Google itself, unlike Apple’s which is only available on their own devices.
These manufacturers also offer a wider range of smartphones than Apple – many of which are far cheaper, without the frills and functionality that less tech-savvy seniors would avoid anyway.
Eugene Liderman, Director of Android Security Strategy at Google, said at a recent briefing on Android security that it is this popularity of Android phones in many countries across the world, Singapore included, that could be contributing to the rise of malware scams.
To the company’s credit, the tech giant has been improving its security functions.
The newest update for its built-in Google Play Protect security feature means that it will now conduct a real-time scan of an app’s code to determine if it has malicious properties.
Previously, it could only identify apps known to be malicious from existing scanning intelligence, or was identified from on-device machine learning or similarity comparisons.
The real-time scanning feature will be applied to all devices on Android 6 or later once it is rolled out in the user’s country. Users need not update their devices to benefit from the feature.
This complements Google’s pre-existing defensive layers, which include detection and warning messages for web browsing, messages, and app installations both on and off the Google Play Store.
Google has also made it mandatory for Android device manufacturers to roll out security patches regularly.
Major local banks in Singapore have also tightened their own defences. In the last two months, UOB, DBS Bank and OCBC Bank have all blocked the usage of their banking apps unless sideloaded apps are removed.
Some of them have additional features that detect when accessibility or screen-sharing functions have been switched on as they are both often used by scammers to gain access to one’s bank account.
The subsequent indignant response to the banks’ security updates points to the problem with scam-proofing one’s phone – these additional layers of security and restrictions are inherently stifling.
They can even be annoying, especially for those with lower digital literacy. Or those who want to use a phone quickly but wind up getting speed humped by these security checks.
With these updates, users won’t be able to sideload geo-blocked apps from overseas that they might need for work. Even if they don’t plan to use digital banking, they could have to contend with multiple pop-up warnings whenever they’re installing a sideloaded app.
For those who are less digitally savvy, this eventually leads to a sort of warning fatigue, where alert messages are completely ignored.
Anyone who’s ever helped someone with tech issues would’ve probably encountered this – everything eventually boils down to “how do I get rid of this message?”
The content of the warning – that you are installing something that might potentially be malicious – is often lost in this case.
Samsung’s Head of Enterprise Business and Product Marketing Timothy Tan, who was also present at Google’s briefing, said that better scam education via strong private-public partnerships is key to overcoming scams.
After all, the final say when it comes to installing sketchy-looking apps – or transferring money to an unknown number for that matter – lies with the user.
Draconian methods of taking away that — like setting up parental controls to control your aged parents — would be insulting for a truly age-inclusive society.
Rather than calling for governments to crack down on Android’s sideloading, or relinquishing user choice and allowing yourself to be digitally coddled, the only way forward is to educate yourself about potential scams and how to spot them.
Installing security patches as they come might be a hassle, but it’s worth the trouble for a safer device.
After all, there’s no getting around the fact that scams are here to stay. We’ll just have to learn with it – either the easy way, or in some unfortunate cases, the hard way.
Opinion: Sideloading Apps On Android Versus Shielding Seniors From Scams A Difficult Compromise
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The popularity of Android
Heightened security measures
Security fatigue
Better scam education
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