According to the latest news update Google prohibits personal loan apps from accessing user photos and contacts. This comes after a recent spike in harassment tactics applied by these personal loan apps.
With a recent update to its Personal Loans policy on Wednesday for apps on Play Store to bring new restrictions prohibiting apps from accessing external storage, photos, videos, contacts, precise location, and call logs.
Google to prohibit personal loan apps from accessing user photos, contacts
The new policy change will come into effect on May 31 in 2023. Making sure that the app users are fully protected from unwanted harassment via their Android devices.
According to recent accounts, an emerging trend has raised concerns as certain individuals who have acquired credit via mobile apps have experienced harassment by debt collectors.
These recovery agents have allegedly accessed the borrowers’ personal contacts, informing friends and family of outstanding debts.
In more extreme cases, agents have employed manipulated images to further intimidate and distress those in debt.
Instant loan apps have boomed in India during the pandemic. First, they lend people money, then they harass and publicly shame them until they can’t cope anymore.
Finding these apps isn’t hard. A simple search for ‘instant loan’ on Google’s Play Store pulls up hundreds of options from RapidRupee to MoreRupee and CashNow to RapidPaisa.
Srikanth Lakshmanan, a researcher who runs Cashless Consumer, a collective that focuses on digital payments in India, has found more than 750 instant loan apps on the Play Store.
Spiral of Debt
Once stuck in a spiral of debt, many of the loan companies draw people in yet further. They will ask people to install a new app to clear an existing debt.
In some instances, loan apps also advertise within other apps and encourage people to download their APK (Android application package), circumventing the Google Play Store entirely.
Some of these apps may also have found loopholes in Google’s Play Store policies. Google’s financial services policy states that it doesn’t allow short-term personal loans – where full repayment is required within 60 days or less.
To get around this, many of the loan apps say they give loans for more than 61 days. But when someone downloads them, they find out the loan must be repaid within seven to 15 days.