Phone scam

[mrsmumbles]

Last week I discovered a phone scam involving someone's Android phone. I was trying to install a free tv mobile app on his phone and I got all the way to tapping install when a prompt popped up asking for money. I was in the Google play store and I know the app is free.

I was shocked and dumbfounded. I asked the phones owner where he had purchased the phone and he said it was at a certain big box store.

So please don't let elderly relatives shop phones by themselves. Anyone who can be taken advantage of. I tried to explain to my friend that there was something amiss with his phone but he didn't want to hear it so I dropped the matter. The Big Box store has a B and B in its name. Apparently they have a bad employee/s making money off the elderly and people who don't understand English well, etc.

 

[B. Diddy]

Which app was it? Do you think it was from that app, or from some other app they might have installed? Or could it have been a browser pop-up ad? It's possible that the store didn't have anything to do with this. If, for example, the person had already been surfing on some websites that had shady popup ads, they might have tapped a link that installed some adware or malware, or executed some kind of browser hijack.

 

[mrsmumbles]

Pluto TV. His phone looked tampered with. I think the money prompt precedes any kind of activity on the phone. Thank you for pointing out some other possibilities. I would be glad if it was something like that.

I don't think the store is in on the fraudulent activity, just someone who knows how to exploit the OS.