Success For Google As It Confirms Its Play Services Warded Off A Mega Fraud Worth $2 Billion

Google Play has managed to ward off a huge fraud worth $2 billion that arose in 2022.

The company mentioned how the initiative tackled threat actors making use of various diverse strategies to generate income. And some of their intricate tricks and dealings were also unveiled by the tech giant.

This included a particular type of payment method that was compromised, which requested refunds for all the in-app items that were already bought. Similarly, they offered some huge scams including fake gift cards which were said to be used for purchases.

Google took this opportunity to shed light on how it has tools that developers may make use of to get rid of abuse of the apps. This included examples like Obfuscated Account ID and Voided Purchases API. The former allows for the detection of fraud-based transactions like devices that allow users to make purchases on similar accounts taking place within a very short span of time. The latter, on the other hand, gives users an entire list of in-app orders with subscriptions for every user that undergoes the void process- so in the end, users can’t gain access to such compromised products.

And if that was not enough, the company adds how it is planning for the release of another program that would be for developers to keep users safe. It is dubbed as Purchases. product, consume.

Further elaborating on this program, Google says users can consume all items seen on the app using the Play Developer API. This would ward off any threats or risks linked to potential abuse by clients or brands. It does this by shifting more of the business’s logic near secure backends.

A great example was provided on how it works including what would happen if a bad actor makes a purchase from the app but tries to meddle with the client, this purchase gets refunded through automated means as there is a lack of acknowledgment seen after a span of just three days of buying the good. So in the end, making use of consumption on the server side would stop this kind of abuse of the app.

In case you might be interested in so many other types of measures that the search engine giant hopes to add to fight the growing threats of fraud, you can read more on this as a lot of data is available online.