ESET researchers discover fraudulent schemes piggybacking on the popularity of the face-modifying tool FaceApp, using a fake “Pro” version of the application as a lure
The latest hype around the FaceApp application has attracted scammers who want to make a quick profit.
The FaceApp application, which offers various face-modifying filters, is available for both Android and iOS. While the app itself is free, some features, marked as “PRO”, are paid. Recent concerns about FaceApp privacy issues have generated a huge wave of media attention.
Scammers have been trying, to various ends, to exploit this wave of interest, using a fake “Pro” – yet free – version of the application as a lure. The fraudsters have also made an effort to spread the word about this fictitious version of the currently-viral app – at the time of writing this blogpost, a Google search for “FaceApp Pro” returns some 200,000 articles.
We have seen two ways the scammers try to make money from the non-existent “Pro” version of FaceApp.
In one of the scams we have seen, attackers have used a fake website that claims to offer the “premium” version of FaceApp for free.
Figure 1. A fraudulent website used in one of the scams
In reality, the scammers trick their victims into clicking through countless offers for installing other paid apps and subscriptions, ads, surveys, and so on. Victims also receive requests from various websites to allow disp ..
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