Loan apps in Pakistan have recently been in hot water, with the FIA and others launching large-scale crackdowns, resulting in many office closures and app deletions from the Google Play Store.
In conjunction with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Google has also implemented stronger regulations against these apps.
If you’ve been following these apps, you’d know that the suspicion is not unfounded. After all, they do collect a dubious quantity of data. Here are the specifics.
Read more :Following a suicide, the FIA begins a massive crackdown on loan applications.
Excessive Permissions
Popular lending apps, especially those registered with the SECP, require an unusually large number of permissions, even for simple operations. For example, Barwaqt requires access to your phone’s gallery, contacts, app activity, and personal information.
Other famous apps, such as JazzCash and Easypaisa, do not show their list of required permissions on the app store, but you may see the full list if you download their apps to your phone. Examine it out.
As you can see, these apps request a lot of information from you as well. Granted, you can always disable any of this data collecting on recent versions of Android, but their presence is highly dubious in the first place.
Other SECP-registered apps, such as EasyLoan and Muawin, are engaging in the same operations. These apps have received over a million downloads in total.
It’s not surprising.
If you’ve been following the narrative, none of this should come as a surprise. These apps have previously gotten into controversy for all of this data collecting. We can only conjecture on whether all of this data is used for their personal benefit or sold to third parties.
On the plus side, SECP did say that it has given a warning to all of its registered apps, including Barwaqt, to alter their predatory activities or face closure within a week.
