Be careful! Hidden risks of wechat “Qingfen”

Mr. Liu, a Guangzhou citizen, told reporters that not long ago, in order to clean up his wechat friends, he tried to use the “Qingfen” service, which has made him “headache” so far. < / P > < p > “my account automatically publishes advertisements under all liked information in the circle of friends, and strangers constantly invade my wechat working group and publish advertisements in it. Some of my wechat friends have also been harassed. ” According to Mr. Liu’s recollection, all this happened after he scanned the QR code sent by the “Qingfen” service provider. < / P > < p > “my wechat group and circle of friends are in a mess. It would be too dangerous if someone pretended to be my wechat friends to cheat on money.” In order to avoid being cheated by colleagues and friends, Mr. Liu had to contact everyone on wechat one by one to explain. It is found that there are many famous e-commerce shops with a unit price of < 3. According to online store data, some monthly sales volume as high as 100000. WeChat official account for such services is also numerous, some of which claim that "0 deleting 0 deleted and deleted" "no trace of powder". < / P > < p > the reporter chose a business that claimed to provide “green powder cleaning” service. The business asked the reporter to add a micro signal as a friend and scan the QR code sent by the account. After completing the requirements, the reporter saw the prompt that “wechat is about to log in through remote iPad”. According to the requirements of the business, the reporter confirmed the authorization of the prompt. Immediately, the reporter’s wechat began to pop up the removed friends’ business cards. After a few minutes, there was a message indicating that the cleaning was completed. < / P > < p > however, not long after the “powder cleaning”, the reporter found that he was directly added as a friend by strangers and pulled into various advertising wechat groups, and wechat was forced to offline repeatedly. Network security experts told reporters that the reporter’s wechat account is likely to be out of control. < / P > < p > according to Xu Chao, an information security expert, the principle of “cleaning powder” is to control the wechat account to be cleaned up by applying cluster control software, so that the account can automatically send messages to all its friends, and then the group control software will identify which “zombie powder” are and delete them according to “whether the information can be sent and received successfully”. < / P > < p > but in addition to cleaning powder, the group control software can also control the wechat account to batch like the contents of the circle of friends, send wechat messages in groups, and automatically agree to add friends and reply. According to the wechat security team, once the user agrees to use the group control software to “take over” the account, the account is likely to get out of control. Not only will their personal privacy be fully exposed to others, such as work, identity, contact information, social relations, financial information and so on may also be obtained by others. It is found that there is a chain of illegal interests behind the “powder cleaning” service. Some people make a profit by developing such software. Reporters found that many websites can be customized powder cleaning software, and show that there have been successful orders. The development price of single cleaning software ranges from 1000 yuan to 5000 yuan. The reporter learned from a software agent developer on an e-commerce platform that the development cost and technical threshold of such software are not high, so it is not difficult to develop such software. < / P > < p > there are also illegal elements who encourage unknown users to spread “Qingfen” links and QR codes to their wechat groups and circle of friends by means of “recommending friends, cleaning powder for free”, “forwarding to groups, giving gifts” and other means. < p > < p > according to industry insiders, there are many ways for lawbreakers to “eat” users who are “successful”: first, they can earn money from selling flour cleaning services. Then you can also control the user’s wechat account and distribute all kinds of marketing advertising information everywhere to make a profit. At present, under the guise of “network integrated marketing” and “network interpersonal promotion”, some “black merchants” who distribute “small advertisements” and create “psoriasis” on the Internet platform are mostly related to such illegal behaviors. Another is to steal the victim’s personal information and sell it for profit. According to the data provided by the wechat team, by the end of June 2020, wechat has imposed short-term or permanent restrictions on millions of accounts that explicitly use external plug-in software such as “Qingfen”. < / P > < p > “although wechat officials continue to crack down, it is not easy to eradicate the infringement of” Qingfen “software.” On the basis of the “guerrilla technology director” of a certain company, it is difficult for the software developers to identify various kinds of “guerrilla technology assistants” in Guangzhou, and they think that the technology development team of a certain company is becoming more and more difficult in terms of technology development. Li Yang, a visiting researcher at Guangzhou University, said that users should enhance their awareness of the security protection of their personal information and data rights, be alert to strangers and unfamiliar applications on the Internet, and should not be greedy for small gains and big losses. Hu Qimu, a senior researcher at the digital economy think tank, believes that network platform operators should further strengthen their awareness of fulfilling the security protection responsibilities of Internet service providers. Zang Lei, a senior researcher at the International Center for network rule of law at Beijing Normal University, reminds that some “Qingfen” software and service providers are suspected of infringing on citizens’ personal information and telecom fraud, and the risk is huge. The platform should make eye-catching signs for such services or contents, and remind users to “do not blindly authorize any third party”.