MUSCAT: Anonymised data, voluntarily provided by internet security provider Kaspersky for Android users, has shown which messenger apps are the most popular among phishing scammers.
The biggest share of detected malicious links between December 2020 and May 2021 were sent via WhatsApp (84.9 per cent), followed by Telegram (5.7 per cent). Viber is in third place with a share of 4.9 per cent and Hangouts has less than one per cent.
Countries experiencing the highest number of phishing attacks were Russia (46 per cent), Brazil (15 per cent) and India (7 per cent). Globally, 480 detections were recorded per day.
According to research, messenger apps outstripped social networks by 20 per cent in 2020, in terms of popularity among users, and became the most popular tool for communication. Survey results also show that in 2020, the global audience for messengers amounted to 2.7 billion people, and by 2023 it is expected to grow to 3.1 billion. That is almost 40 per cent of the world’s population.
According to the statistics, the biggest number of malicious links was detected in WhatsApp, partly due to the fact that it is the most popular messenger globally.
The biggest share of such messages was detected in Russia (42 per cent), Brazil (17 per cent) and India (7 per cent). Telegram had the least amount of detections, but was similar in geography to WhatsApp.
The biggest number of malicious links was detected in Russia (56 per cent), India (6 per cent) and Turkey (4 per cent). High figures in Russia are probably due to the increased level of popularity of this messenger in the country.
Based on statistics, Viber and Hangouts received a smaller number of recorded detections. The key difference between them is regional representation.
The biggest number of detects in Viber was identified mostly in Russia with 89 per cent, and the CIS countries — Ukraine 5 per cent and Belarus 2 per cent, and the majority of Hangouts’ detections were from the USA (39 per cent) and France (39 per cent).
In terms of the number of phishing attacks recorded per user on WhatsApp, Brazil (177) and India (158) led the way. At the same time, Russian users have become leaders in the number of detections on Viber (305) and Telegram (79) compared to other countries.
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