Now that the FIFA World Cup is about to kick off in less than a fortnight’s time over in the spiritual home of soccer (the rest of the world calls it football), Brazil, I am quite sure that many of us footie fans have already bought our favorite team’s jersey to wear as a show of support, gone for some basic face painting classes as well as fire up Electronic Arts’ FIFA series on our consoles, tablets and computers to keep ourselves occupied before the real deal happens. Well, AVAST has warned you to take note that there are fake soccer gaming apps on the Google Play store which show nothing else but ads after installation.
Yes, it works on the same modus operandi as that of YouTube videos that claim to offer you the full movie but upon clicking, you realize that it is nothing but a scam – with a 2 hour long video pointing you to a different URL. AVAST’s warning comes in good time so that your smartphone or tablet won’t be knocked out of commission due to ad-overloaded, data-hungry apps.
Some of the fake soccer gaming apps mentioned include Corner Kick World Cup 2014 and Free Kick Champion, while the “Fifa 2014 Free – World Cup” and “Football World Cup 14” apps also happen to fall under the grey zone as they go around collecting data that has nothing to do with the apps’ functionality.
Filip Chytry, anti-malware expert at AVAST, chimes in on the situation, “This is unfortunately a quite common and sneaky way for developers to make money. With applications like this, the only person who benefits from them are the developers who receive money for each click on the ads displayed in their app.”