Cheetah mobile accused of fraud in app installations

Cheetah Mobile is no stranger to scandals, and they are back in the eye of the hurricane. Since they are accused of committing fraud with their apps. At least eight of them, totaling more than two billion downloads, commit fraud. They take advantage of the permissions and detected when a user installed an application and then they said that this installation had been thanks to their own advertising or recommendation.

Cheetah Mobile accused of cheating to earn commissions for app installs

A total of eight company applications have been detected in this fraud. An investigation that has been carried out by Kochava.

Cheetah Mobile accused of fraud

The reward that can be obtained for installing applications is most interesting for companies, it can go from 0.50 to 3 dollars. Considering the popularity of its apps, it is a fraud of millions. These rewards seek to reward the user using an app from the same developer when viewing ads or a recommendation. Something that Cheetah Mobile claimed to have done. The company applications affected are:

1. Clean Master: One billion downloadsSecurity MasteR: 540 million downloadsCM Launcher 3D: 225 million downloadsKika Keyboard: 205 million downloadsBattery Doctor: 200 million downloadsCheetah Keyboard: 105 million downloadsCM Locker: 105 million downloadsCM File Manager: 65 million downloads downloads

The problem is that these apps claim a reward for installation that they have not caused. So Cheetah Mobile has abused a special permission, which lets you know what apps have been installed on the Android phone. Thanks to these data, they have falsified the information and these facilities are attributed. Although they have had nothing to do with the process.

The company has defended itself against the allegations. Although Google is currently investigating the matter, in order to determine if this has really happened or not. At the moment we do not know when we will have the results of this investigation.

The Hacker News Font