CONNECTION TO THE USE OF FREE ANDROID APPS IN KEBBI STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

In this paper, we studied scamming emanating from the use of free Android apps by conducting an online survey with respondents recruited from four tertiary institutions in Kebbi State, Nigeria. We found that the apps used for communication, such as Facebook and WhatsApp, have the highest number of users. Also, 55.26 % of users reported receiving scam messages that could be linked to their use of free apps, whereas 32.45 % of them were indeed defrauded by scammers. The study concludes that the free social media apps coupled with the characteristic of the users’ login credentials could be responsible for the high rate of scam messages that the respondents receive regularly.

Keywords

• scamming
• respondents
• privacy-sensitive data
• users
• android operating system
• security updates