In India they block your mobile if you stop paying the loans

Buying a mobile phone in India is not as simple as it is in Spain or other more developed countries in the world. Although they are extremely cheap prices, a mobile phone in India continues to cost more than in Spain in proportion to the user's salary. The solution? Loans. What if the loans are not repaid? Remote smartphone lock.

According to the rest of the world website, it is an increasingly common practice in India. Lenders install their own software on the phone that automatically alerts the user or blocks functions if payments are late. Something possible on Android phones where you have more access to system settings, although not on Apple iPhones.

The lack of formal credit scores or payment guarantees has led India to search for alternative methods of offering credit and lenders to secure repayment. One of the most common solutions is to offer partial control of the phone until it is fully paid for. And if not, revoke control of it.

It starts with a warning on the wallpaper

The actions that the lenders' software takes on the phones are gradual and increase as payments are delayed further. First, it begins by sending notifications and if they are late with a payment, they change the wallpaper for one that remembers that there is a pending payment. Later, it begins to send notifications whenever the user opens one of his favorite apps, for example if he takes many pictures, the notification appears every time the camera is opened.

Later? According to rest of the world, this is when the function locks begin. For example, you start by blocking common apps like Facebook or Instagram. From there you go to more and more apps if you don't pay. At a certain point, the mobile is completely blocked until the loan is paid.

Example of how a phone can be blocked if there is a delay in payments.

According to one of the companies that performs this type of action, they see how users pay 50% of the time in the first three days after imposing the wallpaper. In a week they say that 70% of users catch up on payments.

The move these lenders take in India is not new according to the rest of the world. Other companies in other developing countries also use similar techniques to lock phones if they are not paid on time. PayJoy for example offers its phone blocking services in Mexico, South Africa, India and China. There is even an official Google app to do this.

A WhatsApp problem allows third parties to block your account

These are not good times for WhatsApp. I'm not saying they are bad, of course, after all, it is still the most widely used instant messaging service in the world, in addition to having the name given by having been the first great service of its kind after the arrival of smartphones . For many users it is still, today, the first option, and in many cases the only one, to communicate with their contacts quickly and economically.

However, the popularity of WhatsApp is not at its best. The year began with the enormous controversy in relation to the changes in its terms of use. A privacy problem for some, of communication for the company, which in the first instance caused the leap of many users from WhatsApp to other services such as Telegram, which saw their numbers grow like foam during the first days after the announcement.

And today we know, from Forbes, that another stain has appeared on the file, and that is that a simple attack can block a WhatsApp account forever. And when it is said simple, it is not to try to remove iron from the actions that must be carried out, it is really within the reach of anyone who knows how to use email and a mobile phone. You don't need technical knowledge, you don't need any malware, and it's terribly effective. And Facebook, despite having knowledge of it, does not seem to be in the process of taking measures to solve it.

Due to liability, since it is a security problem currently in force, we will not explain here what it consists of, we will only say that it is related to the account verification function and the procedures automatically activated by WhatsApp when notifications of stolen accounts, in combination with a bug detected by the researchers Luis Márquez Carpintero and Ernesto Canales Pereña and whose exploitation is tremendously (terrifyingly I would say) simple. Investigators had alerted Facebook some time ago, but the company responded that they would not correct it, as "it was vilifying the terms of service. As if the interested in jo… r cared about these terms !!. Now that it's been revealed, let's hope Facebook is forced to take action on it.

And the most worrying thing about this WhatsApp security problem is that no matter how careful the user is, no matter how many security measures they take to protect themselves against attacks, these measures will be of no use, because in reality neither the affected user nor their device they play an important role in the attack, which they will attend as passive spectators, first with surprise and later with concern.

Recovering a WhatsApp account that has been attacked with this system is not an easy task, as it will be necessary to contact WhatsApp directly, explain what happened and cross your fingers. Hopefully, now that it has been publicly disclosed, Facebook will take steps both to prevent exploitation of this technique and to help affected users recover their accounts.

The only thing you can do, at least for the moment, is associate your WhatsApp account with an email account (if you have not done so already, and of course, before receiving the attack), and react immediately by contacting WhatsApp if suddenly, and without waiting, you receive several SMS with a six-digit validation code for the app.

Another alternative to protect yourself from this attack is, of course, migrating from WhatsApp to another service. The problem, of course, is that it is essential that your contacts also use it, otherwise you will not be able to communicate with them that way. However, think that if even Mark Zuckerberg has chosen Signal for his communications. Of course, since his phone number was revealed in the latest Facebook leak, he could be a victim of this new attack himself. Of course, a phone call would probably be enough for him to get his account back.