Is this the price of buying cheap phones? You see, Alcatel smartphones have aways been known as being budget-friendly with very low prices but unfortunately, they’ve been the target of malware. One particular weather app pre-installed on the Alcatel Pixi 4 and A3 Max is said to contain malware. What the app does is subscribe phone owners to premium phone numbers. ‘Weather Forecast-World Weather Accurate Radar’ is a default app installed on TCL-developed phones. It’s a legit app but was compromised recently with malware.
We’re not sure how the malware was added but it has caused the phone users big problems and losses. For some, it caused financial losses. The app has been doing a number of unscrupulous activities like offer suspicious traffic, data harvesting, sending of information to a Chinese server, etc.
A UK-based mobile security firm earlier discovered the activities. Upstream said there are malicious codes hidden within the weather app. Some Alcatel phone owners have incurred mysterious charges.
Google already removed the said weather app from the Play Store. This means you will no longer see the ‘Weather Forecast-World Weather Accurate Radar’.
Here are some numbers:
• 2.5 million transaction attempts by the Weather app to buy digital service from 128,845 unique mobile phone numbers in Brazil
• 428,291 transaction attempts blocked in July-August 2018, from the same weather app, also in Brazil
• 78,940 transactions attempts initiated from Alcatel devices blocked in July-August 2018 in Kuwait
• more attempts also blocked in Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria
• total of 27 million transaction attempts in seven markets
VIA: ZDNET
