TERM:
Fraud apps

Definition:

These are fraudulent apps that work in two ways:

• simulated ad interactions;
• intentionally misleading buttons or layouts.

In the simulated ad interactions, bots trigger ad activity. With the misleading buttons or layouts, developers create layouts that overlap ads with content so users will unintentionally click the ads. Users usually have no intention of clicking some of these ads but do so because the ads are so small that they tap them by mistake. Furthermore, these types of apps can contain more ads than they are usually allowed by their operating system to serve, or display ads outside of the screen view of an application.