“By accessing borrowers’ personal contacts and their personal images, debt collectors have sent manipulated photos to friends and family of debtors. A number of these targeted individuals took their lives after the harassment, TechCrunch says.”
Google pulled over 2,000 loan apps in India and hundreds in Kenya last year. Only now does the Play Store policy say a loan app cannot read your contacts and photos, and only from May 31. Until then the Play Store let lenders read a borrower’s photos and contacts. The fix is one line of policy, and it came after the suicides.