The holiday shopping season is just around the corner and fake shopping apps have started showing up on the App Store. These next few months are a huge time for Americans when it comes to shopping and more Americans are shopping online and through apps. This means it’s a prime time for scammers and thieves to take advantage of unsuspecting shoppers through fake apps. That’s right, those who seek to take advantage of people are listing fake shopping apps on the Apple App Store. Some of the fake apps that have shown up include apps for Zappos, Christian Dior, Nordstrom, Footlocker and Dollar Tree.
“We’re seeing a barrage of fake apps,” said Chris Mason, chief executive of Branding Brand, a Pittsburgh company that helps retailers build and maintain apps. He said his company constantly tracks new shopping apps, and this was the first time it had seen so many counterfeit iPhone apps emerge in a short period of time. Some of them appeared to be relatively harmless — essentially junk apps that served up annoying pop-up ads, he said.
Even though many of these fake apps are “junk apps” that are serving junk ads, there is a risk of one of them taking it a step further. Some of these apps could go as far as asking for your personal information including credit card, address, and phone number. If people are duped into giving up that information, it will not go so well for their bank accounts. With the holiday season upon us everyone should be on higher alert for fraud, scams and thieves. Now that people are shopping online more often, there’s a new battlefront to guard.
What do you think of thieves trying to take advantage of shopping app users? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
[button link=”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/technology/more-iphone-fake-retail-apps-before-holidays.html?_r=0″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: NYTimes[/button]Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
