7,654 Nigerians targeted by unwanted notifications- Kaspersky

Kaspersky, cybersecurity firm has said that it detected and prevented push notifications on 7,654 devices of Nigerians in May.

The firm, in a statement said analysis of threats prevented in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Namibia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Egypt in May 2020 showed that 100,414 users in these countries were subjected to the unwanted push notification appearance.

The statement issued on Thursday was entitled ‘Don’t push them: Unbidden push notifications plague is detected on 100,000 devices in a month in Africa’.

Kaspersky said such notifications were prevented from appearing 727,162 times during May, adding that the unwanted notifications could not be classified as malware but were technically described as potentially unwanted objects.

According to Kaspersky, push notifications are meant as a tool for rapid information of users on breaking news but they can be exploited to target shell websites visitors.

It explained that they could fill users’ devices with unsolicited ads and sometimes links to potentially dangerous websites.

The cybersecurity firm said that to achieve that, users were hoaxed into subscribing to notifications, for example, by passing subscription consent off as some other action.

It explained further that victims ended up subscribed to ad deliveries, while at the same time unable to get rid of the annoying messages, being unaware of their source or origin.

The statement stated that Egypt had become the most targeted country with 34,654 targeted users and 302,963 attacks, while in South Africa 26 509 users were subjected to unwanted push notifications activity with 181,275 cases.

This, according to Kaspersky, is followed by Kenya with 24,388 affected browsers and 158, 627 pop-ups, and Nigeria with 7,654 and 40,185 devices and detected pushes, accordingly.