8 apps for Android, accused of fraud

Eight applications for Android mobile devices, published on the Google Play platform and owned by Chinese companies, are responsible for advertising-related fraud for which their company inappropriately pocketed developer revenues by changing clickstream. , a practice of "spam".

The badyst Kochava denounced the practices of Cheetah Mobile and Kika Tech, two companies that provide mobile applications, which she described the practices of "theft," according to one of its badysts.
how the BuzzFeed News portal has been collected.

The practices implemented by the companies involved take into account the fact that the developers of applications often pay a reward, generally between 3 euros and 50 cents, to the advertisers who download their "software".

According to Kochava, Cheetah and Kika applications are responsible for monitoring application downloads made by users of their eight "apps". They were fraudulently attributed the merit of downloads.

The practices of Chinese companies rely on mechanisms of alteration of the clicks, a modality of "spam" with which they managed to pocket the rewards of the developers. For this, they could lead to battery consumption and mobile data in the terminals of users of their applications, according to Kochava.

Cheetah Mobile is responsible for a total of seven of the eight applications denounced by Kochava. It is a Chinese company that develops mobile applications, such as the Clean Master optimization application, and which has 700 million active users.

More than 2 billion downloads

The eight apps involved in the alleged fraud are on Google Play and exceed two billion downloads. These include the Clean Master itself, as well as keyboards from Kika and Cheetah and the Security Master, CM Launcher 3D, Battery Doctor, CM Locker and CM File Manager applications from the latter company.

Kika responded to the accusations by saying that he was currently investigating the practices of tampering with clicks. Cheetah attributed these irregular practices to external developers who provide SDK (Software Development Kit) tools to their applications, as BuzzFeed has collected it.

For its part, Google has not yet eliminated the eight apps from its "software" Play platform, but asked more information from Cheetah and Kika to investigate possible modification processes. clicks for "spam".

Europapress Agency