#RedAlert #Scam- Instant loan apps will edit your face onto X-rated photos and send them to your family

#BeAware 

Getting a financial institution mortgage as a working-elegance Mexican is truly impossible. So, whilst María wished cash, she downloaded SolPeso, one of the developing numbers of immediately lending apps. To supply her the mortgage, the app requested now no longer best for her non-public and economic facts however additionally asked get right of entry to to her phone`s facts, which includes her contacts list. 

 Even aleven though SolPeso transferred much less cash than promised, María, who requested to be diagnosed with the aid of using her first call best to guard her identification for worry of being similarly focused with the aid of using her scammers, stated the app demanded the unique quantity plus hobby be repaid in some days. When she couldn`t pay, the lender referred to as and messaged her with threats. 

 She downloaded a 2d lending app to repay that first debt, after which even extra, which includes Rápikrédito, Super Peso, LoanLaLa, Money Flash, and iFectivo withinside the following couple of weeks. Many of these lending apps joined SolPeso withinside the harassment. Sometimes she acquired extra than 50 calls and messages daily, containing threats that ranged from announcing the creditors might distribute photoshopped pictures of María as a thief to threatening to rape and kill her own circle of relatives if she didn`t repay. 

 “It`s terrifying and depressing,” María stated. “They ship you extraordinarily competitive messages that fill you with worry.” 

 According to the Mexican authorities`s authentic economic fraud record platform, María is one in all masses of customers to be doxed with the aid of using fraudulent mortgage apps in Mexico. “It in no way crosses your thoughts that [lending apps] will use all that statistics to psychologically assault you,” María stated. 

 The media diagnosed ninety four mortgage apps indexed as probable associated with doxing sports throughout diverse Mexican cyber cops departments; 35 of those are to be had on Google`s Play shop, the app shop on Android devices, which account for 80.87% of cell net visitors in Mexico. According to sufferers, authorities officials, virtual rights activists, and platforms, gaps in Mexican regulation permit those creditors to retain to push scams on app shops and go away sufferers with out a clean street to restitution or justice. Consumer schooling and crook investigations that come after a criminal offense has came about are the best approaches to presently fight this new kind of virtual economic fraud, however none of those efforts has stopped the apps from acting in app shops, consistent with virtual safety professionals who spoke to the media. 

 “This kind of fraud should be regulated extra adequately, for the reason that harm doesn`t best have an effect on customers however human beings round them as well,” stated Paul Aguilar, a safety professional at SocialTic, a social rights business enterprise that analyzes Play shop apps for safety or privateness issues. 

 Mexico`s dereliction of duty to mortgage app sufferers is especially obtrusive given worldwide precedent in resolving this issue. In 2021 and early 2022, Google eliminated rip-off immediately-credit score apps and carried out stricter rules on its app shop after the Reserve Bank of India flagged six hundred such apps to the company. 

 “They ship you extraordinarily competitive messages that fill you with worry.”

Meanwhile, Jesús Chávez Ugalde, the director of analysis and statistics of financial services and products for Mexico’s National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Users of Financial Services (CONDUSEF) told the media that the agency can intervene only in situations involving registered financial institutions. This means that unregistered apps are out of regulators’ reach, he said. 

Fiorentina García, co-founder of  digital consumer protection agency Tec-Check, said legal loopholes in app borrowing have created uncertainty about who is responsible for protecting people's rights. told the media. "I think it's clearly CONDUSEF's fault. The agency didn't assume that and apologized," she said. He sent his 13-year-old daughter,  cousin, niece, and 17 other contacts a photoshopped image of a naked woman with Maria's face, saying, "I'm going to be a whore to pay off my debts. I advised her  to call 911 if she had no legal protection. 

 Fraudulent lending apps may not be regulated, but harassment and intimidation methods of collection constitute illegal activity. In Mexico, threats and e-commerce fraud are among the most common cybercrimes reported to the relevant government agency, the National Cyber co. Preventing criminal activity on the Internet. While the cyber police's publicly available records do not show crimes committed by agents renting apps, they are a good indicator of how big the problem of exposure in the country has become. Apart from the 

 National Cyber ​​Police, all Mexican security agencies have cyber security departments, three of which have been fighting fraudulent lending apps since 2021. Their job is to educate the public about how apps work and to make a public case against credit app exposing and “virtual patrols” calling on platforms to shut down credit fraud from  app stores. 

 Still, the number of victims continues to grow. In late 2021, local cyber police in Mexico City reported an increase in complaints about his app instantly exposing users, despite previous reports of risks associated with these apps.  Of the 35 apps that 

 Media currently finds in the Play Store, 24 are often reported multiple times  as his Doxxer platform by the official financial fraud report of the Mexican government. Both OKrédito and Tala Mobile are regulated apps and appear to be receiving consumer complaints about fraud by the Mexican Consumer Protection Agency. Publicists at both companies denied cheating when contacted by the media. 

 Since May, a surge in loan app fraud victims has prompted authorities to take action. Mexico City's local council has asked the local cyber police to investigate  130 lending apps identified by the NGO Civic Council for Security and Justice in Mexico City. A journalist from the Publimetro newspaper  confronted President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He publicly denounced supporters of the Doxing Credit app and ordered an investigation into digital financial fraud. 

 But there are too few groups of interest and too late in the media, he said. For now, scammers are scammers because Mexican authorities will only investigate abroad when a foreign lending app exposes Mexicans and only if they  get information from the platform where the app is hosted. You can use the Play Store as an intermediary. SocialTic Security Expert. The platform rarely provides enough information to cyber police and local prosecutors. Based on its own policy, Google may take action if it detects a discrepancy between the app's data security statement and its behavior in the Play Store. 

 “Google has a great responsibility to have stricter policies and oversight for apps, as it is this company that ultimately authorizes the release of the app,” said Aguilar. 

 The Mexican government has little to do, and  tech companies that platform fraudulent lending apps are not responsible, but civil society is responsible. In the same article that caught the attention of the President of Mexico, Publimetro also exposed harassment from rental apps promoted through their Facebook accounts. Meta, the parent company of the social platform, closed lender user accounts within days. 

 However, most of the activity is limited to educating Mexicans about the risks posed by fraudulent loan apps. For Maria, who was in dire need of cash two months ago, this is easier said than done. Nonetheless, she feels she is slowly getting out of her debt trap on her own. Crédit to her app Doxer has not stopped harassing her, but Maria no longer believes they are not afraid of "I feel obligated now, but not  so much pressure," she said.