Meta sued several app developers for stealing one million WhatsApp accounts. According to Meta’s complaint, once i file .apk of these applications, the apps asked users to enter their WhatsApp credentials and thus stole data from users.
Meta denounces app developers who stole a million WhatsApp accounts
According to what emerges from the complaint, apps like Theme Store for Zap, AppUpdater for WhatsPlus 2021 GB Yo FM HeyMods and others pretended to offer services for WhatsApp. New features, colorful themes. With this excuse they asked for WhatsApp credentials, which they then used to forge their identity and obtain private data from the messaging app’s servers.
Will Cathcart of WhatsApp warned not to download these apps which “are just a scam to steal private information stored on people’s smartphones “. Meta contacted Google in July to check and disable these apps via Google Play Protect.
The executive also explains that Meta has started lawsuits against companies such as HeyMods, who would develop these applications. The company intends to take these companies to court to get to the bottom of the matter.
In fact, Meta thinks that the developers have also broken the terms and conditions of WhatsApp, although it is not clear how the company will manage the process. In fact, the developers involved come from different regions (Hong Kong, Beijing and Taiwan)so it remains to understand how to act legally.
In the meantime, they exhort: “if you see that friends or family are using apps other than the official WhatsApp ones, notify them to download the app only from trusted stores or from the official website “. A tip we feel like sharing: download (any) app only from reliable sources.