Banking against malware-related scams

BACK in August, Simon Hsu, a customer of OCBC Bank, was trying to access the bank’s mobile app to verify that he had received a PayNow fund transfer, when an error message flashed on the screen.

The OCBC app on his phone had stopped running because of another app in the phone that had not been downloaded from an official app store, such as Google’s Play Store or Huawei’s AppGallery.

The app in question was Douyin, the Chinese version of social media app TikTok. He says he favours the app for its self-help content, which he finds relevant.