Hidden mobile advertisements can cause smartphones to waste 2GB of data per day, says study

Forensiq , an ad fraud detection and prevention company, recently announced the findings of their recent study, uncovering a new type of ad fraud called "mobile device hijacking" which affects more than 12 million devices and 13% of global in-app pre-bid advertising inventory.

This fraudulent activity is performed by mobile applications that rapidly load hidden ads and emulate human behavior, drawing many parallels to traditional botnets. Fraudsters collect payments from advertisers for these maliciously hidden ads.

The study includes a video demonstration of the behavior of the malicious apps, which was exposed by a custom packet capture and analysis tools. These tools allowed the Forensiq team to uncover that many apps launch on reboot, without the user loading the application.

Key findings from the study conducted include:

• In-App Fraud poised to surpass the $1 billion mark globally in 2015
•  Mobile advertisers are losing 13% of their ad spend to mobile device hijacking
• 12 million mobile devices were flagged for fraudulent activity
• 700 invisible ads loaded on a single hijacked device in an hour
• Mobile device hijacking can cause a device to waste 2GB of data per day

"With mobile ad spending expected to overtake desktop spending in 2016, tracking fraudulent behavior and raising awareness to new threats such as mobile device hijacking is essential to building a more sustainable and overall safe advertising ecosystem," said David Sendroff, Founder & CEO of Forensiq. "We hope this study will open a discussion and bring all stakeholders together around the issue."