How to find whether the Instagram app is fake or original?

Updated on September 1, 2017

According to the news posted by “Naked security”, the criminals has launched a Fake Instagram application that will infect your Android devices. The Russian criminals have launched an Instagram application with malware that sends SMS at the background without the knowledge of the user. The site has not reported how the criminals benefit from background SMS, but a popular scam is to send such messages to premium numbers which incur charges on a user’s account.

How to download the original Instagram app?

Downloading the Instagram application from any site other than the Google Play, could run into the risk of executing malicious program on your device.

How to identify the Fake Instagram app?

The site reports that one way to identify is to look for the following photo:

Instagram Fake app photo
Lookout for this photo inside the app’s .APK file.

According to Naked security, the Fake app will feature many such photos inside the app’s .APK file. “Maybe the reason why his picture is included multiple times is to change the fingerprint of the .APK in the hope that rudimentary anti-virus scanners might be fooled into not recognizing the malicious package,” the author, Graham Cluley, a technology consultant at Sophos, speculates.

The malware app has hit the market after the Instagram hit a record download of 5 million after Facebook acquired it.

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