1 Million Android Mobiles Hacked By Fraudsters To Watch Smart TV Ads Share to Facebook Share to Linkedin Google Play was host to apps that were facilitating a huge fraud scheme that created fake views for connected TV ads, researchers warned. Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images In what’s been described as one of “the most sophisticated” fraud campaigns of its kind, hackers infected more than a million Android phones with malware that would fake views on ads in order to score funds for the malicious developers. The scam, dating back to at least 2019, was revealed on Wednesday by fraud researchers at Human, a company formerly known as White Ops and recently acquired by Goldman Sachs. They found that 29 Android apps, most being marketed on Google’s official Play market, made infected Android devices appear to be smart TVs in order to serve 650 million ad requests a day. They then received payments from the ad providers, who were tricked into believing the ad views were real, when no person ever actually saw them. As many as 36 apps on Roku, the streaming TV platform, were also discovered to be part of the same scam, though, for unknown reasons, were not doing the same level of fraudulent ad impressions.