From 'Bulli Bai' To Loan Shark Apps: Big Tech's Unacceptable Quality Control Crisis

From predatory loan sharks exploiting the naivete of regular users to the creation of an app meant to "auction" Muslim women, the digital landscape in India is currently in the middle of a quality control nightmare.

Think of trying to find a new game to download from your respective smartphone ecosystem store - only to get overwhelmed by so many options and going back to playing an old game on your device - that's what saturation does. There's so much content to be consumed that we don't know what to consume anymore. This crowding of digital app spaces is exploited by scammers.

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Digital ecosystems are overwhelmingly crowded

Apps on reputed digital marketplaces like Google Play and Apple's App Store are installed by average users without doing a background check. They may not be aware of how to check the veracity of an app (Google for instance, gives badges to apps it finds safe) or are simply in a hurry to get the job at hand done (this could be for something menial like scanning an image or a document).

Regardless, it's lottery hour for scammers and digital hackers every time you install a potentially harmful app that may not have any evident signs of maliciousness but in the background this app may be sucking on your private data like its life depends on the same - which it kind of does!

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What "Bulli Bai" and loan shark apps tell us

The same thing happened when a few individuals thought that illegally using images of Muslim women and creating a metaphorical "auction" of these women using Microsoft's GitHub was somehow acceptable.

Clearly not! Now, the three accused (including an 18-year-old girl) are currently in the custody of authorities. It's unclear how GitHub verifies and assesses the contents of whatever developers create on the platform, for this has happened twice on the developer-centric platform.

Also read: Deafening Silence: What 'Bulli Bai' And 'Sulli Deals' Tell Us About Big Tech Giants

The first time an app called "Sulli Deals" wanted to auction off Muslim women digitally, and its disgraceful successor "Bulli Bai" intended to do the same.

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Well-deserved public outrage may have stopped the ball from rolling this time, but a lack of measures to enforce quality controls on reputed platforms like GitHub (owned by the world's second largest company in terms of market value) highlight the lack of concern such big tech companies show for their users, especially if they're not in North America.

GitHub claims that it "is committed to developer privacy and provides a high standard of privacy protection to all our developers and customers" but doesn't really explain how an app created to harass a certain community made its way onto the platform unscathed.

Loan shark apps is another fresh in-app hell intensified by the ongoing pandemic, especially here in India. According to an Economic Times report from June 2020, at least 50 apps at that time were harassing their users endlessly, many pushing others to suicide, which drove Google to removing 400 such apps from its Play Store in January, 2021.

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Most loan shark apps look legit and carry names like Money Loan, Loan Paisa, Loan Udhaar, Go Cash, Money In Need, etc. - emulating the characteristics of a verified lender.

Amid high interest rates and endless harassment, loan defaulters are left without a safety net when deadlines aren't met. In many cases, such applications will resorting to public mud slinging in hopes of getting their money back.

Like physical loan sharks, digital money lenders operate by attacking the vulnerable and those in dire need of financial assistance. While it may look convenient in the beginning, such experiences turn into nightmares pretty quickly as due dates are missed. The aftermath of this unregulated mishap led to the Reserve Bank of India drafting new rules for digital lenders to ensure loan shark apps didn't bite unsuspecting victims.

Lack of oversight

Whether it's Facebook's data breaches of the past or various loan sharks on Google Play or Microsoft / Github's passive role in the unfolding Bulli Bai app crisis, lack of oversight has turned these bright digital spots into grey zones where everything from user privacy and basic law and order are openly disregarded.

While it's true that the government has the responsibility to put mechanisms in place to regulate tech companies before they function like quasi-governments, it's also the onus of mega-companies to put safety measures and quality control parameters in place before rolling out a service to anyone with internet connectivity on their smartphones.

Also read: FB Whistleblower Sophie Zhang On The Social Giant¡¯s Uncomfortable Relationship With Democracies

To be fair, it's virtually impossible for tech companies to manually check the safety of each app that is available on its platforms. A rough estimate from 2021 claims that 3,739 apps are added to the Google Play Store each day - that's about 1,364,735 apps each year! What about third-party app stores and side-loading app destinations?

Such competition may be great to ensure diversity and development of better tech, but it's precisely what's exploited by scammers to mine your personal data, which may then be sold off to buyers on the dark web illegally. Once leaked, there is no way to stop scammers from using your personal details to conduct illegal activities.

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Google, for instance, claims that "Google Play Protect checks apps when you install them. It also periodically scans your device. If it finds a potentially harmful app, it might: Send you a notification / Disable the app until you uninstall it / Remove the app automatically."

Apple, too claims that its App Store is completely safe to use - "On iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, all apps are obtained from the App Store ¡ª and all apps are sandboxed ¡ª to provide the tightest controls." According to the company, "sandboxing helps protect user data from unauthorised access by apps."

The government of India, too, has banned apps on multiple occasions. For instance, a coterie of apps including PUBG and TikTok were banned in 2020 citing threat to national security. But this move wasn't aimed at protecting individual user privacy and safety but rather tried to fan geopolitical fires.

How you can keep yourself safe

In the absence of a rigorous quality control mechanism in place, the onus falls on each user to preserve their privacy and data on the internet.

As a user, you can follow a few set of rules to ensure your safety before downloading any new software on your devices.

To check whether apps are safe to download on both Apple App Store and Google Play Store, you must make it a point to assess its review - if they all speak highly of the app using the same set of words, these reviews could be fake.

Also read: Explained: Why You Should Beware Of Quick Loan Apps Installed On Your Phone

On Google Play, look for the Google Play Protect badge on apps before clicking download. On either platforms, make sure you read the app description carefully. A company that cares about its product would never write half-hearted and misleading descriptions.

The download count is another signifier of an app's potential dangers. Last but not the least - Always see what permissions the app needs! For instance, if you download a stock calculator app on your phone, there is no need for it to have access to your files and call log/messages. You can limit app permissions by checking your phone settings and ensuring apps only get what they offer.

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If you're still worried about hitting install, your best bet is to check the developer's page. Clicking on link redirects you to a webpage error? That's a red flag that mustn't be ignored.

In the absence of unified quality control measures on digital properties, always being wary of what you put on your device will keep you protected from threats in the long run. From loan sharks to data miners to perverts, precaution is your best bet against the dangers of living online.

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