Alert:
Reduce Cost, Increase Capability
Diminishing Regulatory Risk with Trustworthy Revenue
Focus on Your Customers' Experience
The off-portal SMS and PSMS businesses have changed. In North America, Europe, and Australasia, WMC Global's proactive approach to SMS and PSMS compliance assurance has helped carriers protect their brands and customers by focusing on the actual customer experience. By employing WMC Global's best-in-class compliance assurance solutions, carriers have mitigated successfully deception and fraud perpetrated against consumers and have limited customer backlash and legal and regulatory risks.
Leverage the Most Comprehensive Answer to Compliance Assurance in Today's Market
Recently, CTIA-The Wireless Association® (the CTIA) and a committee of U.S. carriers selected WMC Global to provide the CTIA's industry-wide SMS and PSMS Compliance Assurance Solution. As a result, U.S. carriers now are leveraging the most comprehensive answer in the market to better protect their business and customers and to increase their margins, while ensuring a more cohesive environment for brands to operate off-portal campaigns.
Increase Coverage While Maximizing Efficiency
Carriers are lowering their own monitoring costs and operational burdens dramatically by adopting the CTIA's industry solution, enabling them to concentrate on effective channel management and growth. At the same time, they are redeploying their own monitoring efforts to protect new and exposed platforms, including mobile payment and developer API platforms, thereby taking preventative action against customer abuse and fraud.
Increase Margins While Driving Growth
Carriers adopting the CTIA's industry-wide solution also are significantly reducing barriers to entry and growth for content providers. By eliminating duplicate monitoring and enforcement within their own environments, they restore significant growth potential to the off-portal SMS and PSMS businesses as they increase their margins.
Alert:
It's Now, It's Open . . .
Delivering Customer Confidence in the Open Environment
Maximise Open Revenue
Carriers racing to maximise mobile apps and services revenue are fostering 'open' ecosystems that expose customer billing, location, and personal information. Maximising open revenue is about striking a balance among customer experience quality, illicit activity mitigation, and developers' confidence in carriers' API environments and business processes. WMC Global helps achieve this balance, known as digital confidence, by delivering solutions that empower carriers to open their networks safely, support volumes of global developers, and understand and optimise their customers' experiences.
Manage Open Risk
Carriers and app stores' recent experiences with fraud and malware illustrate how sharks in the mobile waters are seeking illicit gain
from the open environment. Unlike in yesterday's mobile content market, today's developers operate globally, and customer adoption has become mainstream. So open risk has never been greater. Carriers employ WMC Global Product Certification and Compliance Assurance solutions to mitigate that risk and reduce churn, care cost, brand damage, and legal and regulatory issues.
Optimise the Open Experience
To optimise their customers' experiences via their network, carriers must know and understand these interactions. Carriers turn to WMC Global Customer Experience Monitoring solutions to discover how developers are leveraging their open APIs and to identify and mitigate or eliminate customer experience issues. Customer Experience Monitoring helps carriers distinguish the best and the worst practices, apps, and developers, allowing them to enable more innovative, more productive, and therefore more profitable apps and mobile services.
Build Open Trust
Ultimately, open success fosters trust, in carrier relationships with both customers and developers. Satisfied customers spend more money, and confident developers market more apps and mobile services. WMC Global solutions for digital confidence allow carriers to build trust in their open environments, maximising revenue for all constituents.
Alert:
Optimise Revenue, Maximise Growth
Driving Margin and Time-to-Market Advantage
Ensure Rapid Launch of Apps and Mobile Services
Carriers responding to recent malware, fraud, and privacy incidents among apps and mobile services face a major challenge: certification solutions that cause a time-to-market increase for developers can decrease carrier profitability. Processes for certifying developers, and their apps and mobile services, therefore, must be rapid and scalable because developers deprioritise carriers who value due diligence. Via its Product Certification and Compliance Assurance solutions, WMC Global evaluates 60,000 apps and mobile services monthly, fulfilling carriers' need to protect their customers and their business without hindering profitable and reputable developers.
Identify and Promote Only Profitable Apps and Mobile Services
How can carriers maximise their apps and mobile services revenues? How can developers capable of driving revenue feel confident carriers will promote
their app or mobile service adequately? WMC Global's Content Merchandising solutions team monitors carriers and app stores' product catalogs constantly, identifying apps and mobile services that generate customer interest and profit and recommending to carriers immediate feature-positioning or striking deals quickly with new developers. In this way, carriers have the assets they need to maximise the revenue and brand potential of their portals and app stores.
Drive Scalability with Real-Time Market Feedback
WMC Global Content Merchandising solutions maximise carriers' app and mobile services revenue because they work in real time. The app and mobile services lifecycle is short and the market dynamic; consequently, identifying, certifying, onboarding, and featuring the right developers and their apps and mobile services has become a constant real-time vocation. WMC Global's Content Merchandising solutions team works continually on behalf of carriers to ensure that they lead—not follow—the app and mobile services market, thereby fully realising the category's revenue potential.
Drive Revenue and Margin
WMC Global Content Merchandising solutions incorporate real-time reports of carrier sales and download levels as well as publicly available download information from competing portals and app stores. To develop real-time content merchandising strategies, WMC Global's Content Merchandising solutions team leverages this information to help carriers maximise their app and mobile services revenues and margins, outperform their competitors, compete with dominant app stores, and enjoy the brand benefits of associating with the most relevant apps and mobile services in the market.
Alert:
Build Trust, Reduce Churn
Committing to the Customer Experience
Protect API Platforms Proactively
Carriers around the world are allowing mobile developers access to APIs that enable mobile billing; access to customer location and personal and demographic information; and access to device capabilities. For years, digital payment companies have invested millions in protecting their businesses, brands, and customers from online threats. As carriers open APIs for billing and exposure of customer information, they, too, must ensure their own protection; otherwise, carriers and their customers will fall victim to deception, phishing, and fraud. By employing WMC Global’s Compliance Assurance solution to monitor customer experiences using developer API-enabled services, carriers are ensuring proactively the viability of their developer API businesses by preventing negative customer experiences from emerging on their networks.
Attract Brands by Fostering Customer Trust
Adoption by major companies and brands results in success for developer APIs. When customers become wary of unexpected charges, privacy risks, and deception, reputable companies refuse to participate. So, customer trust is critical to attracting brands. With WMC Global’s Compliance Assurance solution, carriers are assured that their customers are protected. Consequently, they can fulfil their customer promise to provide advanced services in a family-safe environment, maximising revenue for the entire value chain.
Reduce Churn with Effective Monitoring
Customers affected by negative experiences while using developer API-enabled services, regardless of the cause, blame the carrier, driving care cost and churn. By committing to ensuring a positive customer experience through effective monitoring and enforcement provided by WMC Global’s Compliance Assurance solution, carriers reduce their churn risk and deliver a better customer experience.
Drive Revenue by Promoting Market Understanding
As well as protecting carriers and their customers, WMC Global’s Compliance Assurance solution reports the types of customer experiences and categories of services and apps using developer APIs. In leveraging these reports, carriers know exactly who and what is driving API traffic, an advantage that helps them refine their products and drive more revenue.
Alert:
Protect the Brand, Defend the Business
Targeting Digital Brand Abuse and Fraud
Detect Dynamic Threat Sources in Real Time
With the explosion of mobile Internet usage and app stores, and the capability for developers to market apps and mobile services from almost any global location, more opportunities than ever have arisen for digital brand abuse, phishing, counterfeiting, illegitimate marketing practices, and fraud. WMC Global Threat Detection solutions protect carriers, major financial services compainies, and Fortune 500 companies by monitoring app stores and the mobile Internet constantly for threats, performing blackbox analyses of suspicious apps and mobile services to gather evidence and quantify risk factors, and executing mitigation strategies to remove the source of the threat from the marketplace. As a result, WMC Global clients can respond rapidly to digital threats before they affect their customers and business substantially.
Recoup Lost Revenue and Reduce Cost through Effective Threat Detection
Rogue apps and mobile services reduce revenue in two significant ways: first, by damaging consumer confidence in using all apps and mobile services; and second, by diverting revenue to counterfeiters and imposters. Direct costs arise from mitigating incidents, preventing fraud, and counteracting negative publicity and brand damage. WMC Global Threat Detection solutions aim to eliminate threats before they damage customers, businesses, or brands significantly. Effectually, the solutions minimise costs and losses and position clients' apps and mobile services for maximum business success.
Detect and Eliminate Money Laundering and Fraud
By combining market data with transactional monitoring and analysis of payment systems, WMC Global Threat Detection solutions address use of carriers' payment gateways for money laundering, artificial inflation of traffic fraud, and billing fraud that occurs without visible use of consumer-facing apps or mobile services. This unique approach means WMC Global's clients can detect fraud promptly, identify and pursue the companies and individuals responsible, and deploy automated, early-warning processes capable of detecting and stopping similar attacks automatically.
Alert:
Maximise Quality, Minimise Cost
Doing It Right the First Time
Commit to Excellence
Underlying all of WMC Global's endeavors—reports and other products, market alerts, and analysis methodologies—is an ethos of accuracy, consistency, and fairness. Since its inception, WMC Global has served wireless carriers and Fortune 500 companies with time-sensitive reports used to monitor customer experience quality and facilitate corrective action against developers operating apps and mobile services that fail to meet industry and client standards. As the leader in delivering digital confidence, WMC Global recognises that information accuracy is vital to clients who could incur legal risk should they act on incorrect or inconsistent findings. For this reason, ongoing oversight of analysts and exacting quality assurance processes play an integral role in guaranteeing data integrity. It is this commitment to excellence that has made WMC Global the choice of carriers, financial services companies, large consultancy firms, regulators, and industry associations across the world.
Manage Time to Market
Even the most successful app stores, apps, and mobile services reap the consequences of rushing to market. Featured in recent technology news exposés are instances of malware, mainstream apps exposing customers' private information, and large-scale fraudulent activity leveraging carriers' payment gateways. Significant process breakdowns have been publicised, reducing customer confidence and putting carriers and app stores at risk of legal and regulatory ramifications. With WMC Global's support, carriers can strengthen their position as a trustworthy brand and create competitive advantage by ensuring they plug the gaps in their go-to-market strategies for developers, apps, and mobile services.
Minimise Time to Market with Efficient Planning
WMC Global launch processes, operating within tight timeframes and at scale, empower carriers to facilitate a rapid time to market for apps and mobile services—without compromising their standards for ensuring customer confidence and the long-term success of the category. WMC Global delivers the best of both worlds.
Minimise Cost with Effective Execution
Effective implementation of quality and security controls minimises cost, while current short-term approaches come with significant medium- and long-term damage in the form of reduced customer confidence and major incidents that cause negative public relations, brand damage, and potential for legal and regulatory action. An investment in delivering digital confidence with WMC Global is an investment in business success.
Android Market and Copyright Violation
Google has augmented its rapid expansion and popularity by creating an open system for developers to submit their apps to its Android Market. Although this system has proven fundamental to Android Market’s success by attracting consumers with an application platform competitive with Apple, the rapid expansion (more than 100,000 apps in late 2010) has had unexpected consequences for many companies’ efforts to protect themselves from brand hijacking, copyright infringement, and counterfeiting.
According to an article published by ChillingEffects.org, in February 2011 alone, Android Market received 206 complaints relating to copyright infringement, trademark infringement, or both. Among these communications, 59 companies filed complaints for trademark infringement; five financial institutions, in particular, filed for bank trademark violations; and 10 companies complained that their logos were used without permission.
Even though Google’s Android Market’s review process for apps and developers is less substantial than Apple requires, developers must agree to the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement. In Section 5.5 of this agreement, License Grants, requirements for developers to abide by copyright and trademark laws are outlined in particular. Specifically, developers must agree to, “not submit material to Market that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret. . . . ” Google takes copyright and trademark infringement seriously—proven by the ChillingEffects.org data, where Google appears in third place for infringement-concern submissions.
Mobile industry experts and companies involved in these conversations are still debating whether the first open app store (Android Market) is a working model for future app stores. If so, whether Android Market facilitators take their app store management duties to protect copyrights and trademarks seriously is uncertain. According to Joe Mullin of mocoNews.net, they do. Nevertheless, instead of removing apps from Android Market immediately on receipt of takedown notice, Google is evaluating takedown notices for copyright and trademark infringement. No unanimity exists whether Google should make the final decision about an app that already has been made available to the public and that could cause consumers harm.
Although many apps affected by the takedown notices served to Google were removed, a few companies’ requests met with failure. For example, U.S. Bank filed a takedown notice for an app that functions as a portal to the mobile version of the U.S. Bank Website, but Google has failed to remove the app because it deems the app noninfringing. If Google fails to test apps thoroughly before launch, and because no formal monitoring programme for Android Market exists, Google can trust only that developers abide by its terms and conditions. Furthermore, Google management must expect an increasing number of takedown notices as Android Market continues to expand rapidly.
WMC Global Threat Detection, Brand Protection, and Copyright Protection solutions are designed to detect such issues in all major app stores and across the mobile Internet. Its solutions include delivering takedown notices to app stores as well as approaching every value chain participant to try to disable apps and mobile services that clients deem illegitimate or potentially harmful to their customers. For more information, email: info@wmcglobal.com.au.
Apps Releasing Personal Information
Smartphones allow consumers to carry their lives in their pockets, effectually. These devices hold personal data, such as email, phone numbers, browsing histories, contact information, credit card information, and exact GPS locations with heading and velocity, among other private details. As with most new technologies, apps and app stores have been rushed to market, and ensuring appropriate levels of customer safety and privacy have become an afterthought. Therefore, mainstream consumers placing third-party apps on their devices and granting them varying degrees of access to their phones are putting their private information at risk.
In December 2010, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a report concerning both the iPhone and Android Market that confirmed the suspicions of many industry experts—third-party apps are accessing and sending personal information from consumer devices to a variety of receiving parties. Of the 101 apps the WSJ tested, more than 55 percent were sending consumer data from mobile phones. Consumers are made aware of each app’s permissions when downloading and installing the apps; however, these permissions often are stated in oversimplified language, and most consumers fail to understand their implications. In most cases, the apps fail to display a privacy policy and give consumers the opportunity to make decisions regarding the distribution of their personal information. The WSJ stated that about 44 percent of the 101 apps had no form of privacy policy.
The WSJ report results support WMC Global’s November 2010 Android app study that shows 56 percent of apps tested transmitted personally identifiable user data insecurely via the open Internet. These data include phone numbers, email addresses, unique device identifying numbers (also known as the “supercookie”), demographic information, and in one case, users’ social security numbers. The WSJ results further support the Android app study in which WMC Global found only 47 percent of apps had any form of privacy policy. WMC Global further investigated the privacy policies of the tested apps and found that only three of the apps with privacy policies placed their privacy policy within the typical user experience; the remaining apps that featured privacy policies listed this information on a separate Website. This finding means that only 10 percent of consumers encountered privacy policies or similar disclosures when downloading their apps. WMC Global’s further investigation into apps with privacy policies showed that 30 percent of these apps violated their own privacy policies by sending secure user information from the phone in an insecure manner.
Because of the lack of privacy policies and disclosures today, consumers are mostly ignorant of the liberties afforded to apps, including access to read and distribute personal information; however, this situation is changing rapidly. The WSJ exposé and mounting regulatory attention likely will result in restrictions for the mobile app industry, unless the industry can demonstrate itself capable of protecting consumers. Ultimately, this job is up to the carriers and the app stores. WMC Global’s Product Certification solution allows carriers and app stores to protect consumers from breaches in personal information security caused by apps they market to customers or associate with their brands. For more information, contact info@wmcglobal.com.au.
Third-Party Mobile Financial Apps
Cause Corporate and Consumer Concern
As consumers adopt smartphones for convenience on the go, they expect apps they use to be secure—especially financial apps. Rapid development of financial apps by parties other than the financial institutions themselves, nonetheless, has created risks for both consumers and financial institutions.
On March 9, 2011, Android Market returned results of more than 500 apps with financial or banking functionalities: more than 90 percent of the apps reviewed had been developed by parties other than the financial institutions. Some of these apps are designed to interact directly (on the user’s behalf) with bank and credit card companies’ customer-facing Internet, mobile portals, and SMS. Others are designed to store secure financial information, including login credentials, credit card details, and ATM PINs, in “safe lockers” on users’ devices or in a developer-hosted private cloud.
According to BankInfoSecurity.com, in 2009, a Fortune 500 financial institution “noted vulnerabilities when it learned some banking apps stored sensitive user details in hidden files on smart phones.” Smartphones are increasingly vulnerable to fraudulent activity, spyware, and viruses—several Trojan viruses have affected Android phones in the past year. Developers, too, now can come from anywhere, and many developers of financial apps are located in developing nations.
The financial services industry has little choice but to scale up its monitoring and security operations across the mobile Internet and app stores to protect itself and its customers. With the volume of mobile Internet Websites multiplying, and more than 111 active app stores around the globe today, the task of identifying and mitigating digital threats in the mobile environment is becoming increasingly complex and cumbersome.
WMC Global’s Threat Detection solution, born of more than four years’ experience policing apps and mobile services in several world markets, helps financial institutions identify digital threats, develops mitigation strategies that target the entire value chain, and leads enforcement action to remove the threats from market. For more information, email: info@wmcglobal.com.au.
MARKET NEWS
As the app market expands, so do issues of copyright and trademark infringement and brand abuse.
Consumers' Private Data at Risk
Unknown to most users, many mobile apps collect and distribute their private data.
Risky Third-Party Financial Apps
Independent financial apps are taking and storing secure financial information and interacting directly with banks and credit card companies.