MILLIONS of smartphone users have been warned to check their devices for 249 apps that aim to steal your money.
Whether you use Android or iPhone, it’s worth removing the apps if you spot them on your phone.
Trend Micro’s Threat Research team discovered the fake cryptocurrency apps.
In January, they revealed that the apps had stolen around $4.3 million.
The researchers also warned that many of the apps are still out there and revealed several red flags to watch out for.
“The hackers have created numerous different fake crypto wallet apps designed to perfectly mimic real ones, including apps from MetaMask, imToken, Bitpie, and Trust Wallet.
“The hackers are clever — they are targeting their victims in multiple ways,” Trend Micro revealed.
Scammers are said to be encouraging victims to download the fake apps via emails and texts.
The messages are convincing and impersonate a real message you could receive from one of the most popular cryptocurrency apps.
“Although the scammers are regularly updating the content of the messages, they most commonly say that the current version of your crypto wallet app is out of date,” warns Trend Micro.
Victims are then encouraged to download a new version of the app which is actually a scam.
Hackers are also said to be using fake crypto websites and scam tech support messages to encourage people to download malicious apps.
The websites are said to look very similar to the real deal and can appear high up in search engine result lists.
You may even receive a scam call from cybercriminals telling you to download the apps.
Fake versions of the popular imToken, Bitpie, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and TokenPocket were discovered.
“A total of 249 fake apps were discovered, which the team found were downloaded by victims in countries all over the world, including the United States, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan,” the researchers revealed.
The apps work by stealing data which gives the hackers access to the real crypto wallets of victims.
Trend Micro suspects that the amount of cryptocurrency stolen in this scam could actually be much more than $4.3million.
To stay safe, it’s best to only download apps from official app stores.
“If you observe any suspicious behavior when updating a crypto wallet app, immediately terminate the update and uninstall the app,” Trend Micro warns.
