How to Distinguish Legal and Illegal Applications on the Play Store According to IT Experts

Talking about cybersecurity is indeed quite important, especially with the many people who depend on technology.

When viewed from the prevalence of cybercrime, technology is often to blame.

However, according to Dr. Charles Lim, IT expert and digital security expert from Swiss German University, technology is not the one to blame.

In using the internet, there are three components that must participate in securing cyber, namely People, Process, and Technology.

Cyber ​​crime has various ways, one of which can be from an application.

Dr. Charles said about 30 percent of apps on the Google Play Store still contain malware.

If there are users who do not know that the application contains malware, then they may experience things that are not expected.

For example, like taking a user's credit or locking a smartphone, then being threatened for redemption via bitcoin.

Locking a smartphone by malware like that can be a bad thing, because the perpetrator can threaten the existence of folders or photos on the smartphone.

There are ways to prevent this from happening.

The first is to make sure you download the application from a safe place like the Google Play Store or the App Store.

If there are applications that are shared from the WhatsApp group or website, you need to be careful, and it's better not to download them.

Dr. Charles also talked about how to distinguish between legal and non-illegal applications on the two platforms.

The way to distinguish it is by looking at the identity of the application maker, and also seeing review comments.

If the comments from the selected application are even more good, then it is suspicious.

Therefore, it is important to look at the number of downloads as well, because legal applications are definitely more downloaded.

According to Dr. Charles, it's safer if users download verified applications so they can avoid malware applications.

He also admits that platforms like the Google Play Store are not completely secure.

"The Play Store is not 100 percent safe," said Dr. Charles through the Gojek Shiled via Zoom (13/10).

Gojek in the application for drivers embeds two features, one of which is useful for detecting illegal devices and for detecting fictitious orders.