It is disheartening to see a lot of our fellow Indians are falling prey to fake loan apps.

 These loan apps don't follow RBI guidelines and they found their way easily into the play store. It is the responsibility of the Google play store to audit financial apps before making them available to the public.

How these loan apps harass people:

1. When you install these apps, they ask permission to access your contacts, messages, etc..almost all of your data.
2. They usually offer short-term loans of around 5000 rupees with short durations ranging from 1 week to 1 month.
3. They charge very high rates of interest. For example, they charge around 20 to 30% interest rates for a week period.
4. If you take an Rs5000 loan, they deposit only 4000Rs and expect you to return that within a week. If you fail to return back, they start calling you.
5. They start charging a fine of Rs100 to Rs150 per day from the 8th day.
6. If you don't pay, they call your contacts and talk badly about you.
7. They talk filthy language with you.
8. They start sending WhatsApp messages to all your contacts.
9. They don't stop there, they send morphed photos of you and your family members in disgusting ways that one can't digest.
10. Many people did suicide and lost their lives.

It is our duty to prevent this harassment and save our fellow Indians from these scamsters. There are thousands of cases registered. However, these apps keep popping up. To avoid them, the best way is to stop them at the source.

With minimal auditing for financial apps and avoiding access to contacts, google can easily prevent this.

I urge you to educate your friends and family, sign this petition, and beware of these scamsters.

For your reference, this became a continuous saga from the year 2020 and still, we are not able to get rid of them. Here are a few heart-wrenching news reports from recent to old. There are 100 times untold experiences.

 

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/bank-employee-ends-life-over-harassment-by-loan-app-executives/article65690373.ece

https://medium.com/cashlessconsumer/fake-digital-lending-apps-collection-harassment-8e56ab5ac0bd

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/hyderabad-man-kills-self-allegedly-due-harassment-loan-app-agents-166016

https://www.news18.com/news/india/loan-app-harassment-drives-youngsters-to-take-extreme-steps-in-telangana-5557333.html

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/tamil-nadu-harassed-by-online-money-lender-27-year-old-kills-self/articleshow/79904403.cms

 

Appeal To Google:

Google, you have changed our lives in a lot of better ways. This is an appeal to introduce stringent audits (manual) for financial apps and strengthen your policies and remove these scam loan apps and prevent entry for them in the future. Your initiative can save a lot of lives and peace to a lot of others.

JaiHind