Rogue TikTok accounts are promoting adware scam apps posing as “Shock Roulette” and “Wallpaper” apps
When a 12-year-old girl in the Czech Republic suspected that something was off with a popular app that was circulating on TikTok, she knew what to do — report it to Avast. The Avast team followed up and found a total of seven adware scam apps that were available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. The apps have been downloaded more than 2.4 million times and are reported to have earned their creators around $500,000.
The Avast team found at least three profiles that are aggressively pushing the apps on TikTok, one of which has more than 300K followers. They also found an Instagram profile with more than 5,000 followers promoting one of the apps. Avast has reported the apps to Apple and Google and the accounts to TikTok and Instagram.
The young person who reported the original scam app participated in Avast’s Be Safe Online project, which goes into Czech middle schools and teaches young people about online safety and how to advocate for themselves. Using the skills she learned in the program, the young lady was able to identify and report the scam directly to Avast.
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“This is a great example of this kind of education working,” Whitney Glockner Black, Communications Director at Avast, says. “Teach kids how to spot the bad things and they’ ..
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