Football-betting applications surging on App Store Vietnam as Euro season arrives

When he searched for applications to watch the Euro 2024 tournament, Ngoc Hung, from Hanoi, was surprised to see the first Google results showing up to be a gambling website.

"Apple is famous for its tight control over the applications uploaded. I don't understand why such applications show up," Hung said.

These applications are described as tools for various purposes, such as animation or financial management. However, their preview thumbnails instead show images of illegal gambling websites.

They are usually up to a few megabytes worth of memory, and some of them have developers’ names that match with the names of companies in Vietnam.

Following installation, these applications send users to gambling websites for Euro matches. The applications themselves do not contain any other content.

In accordance with Vietnamese law, all online gambling activities are banned. Back in April, two broadcasting units were fined for showing advertisements for gambling websites during live matches.

An Apple representative did not give comments upon inquiries on the matter.

In an App Store 2023 transparency report announced last month, the tech giant said it has deleted 5,064 applications from Vietnam for violating regulations on the platform, most commonly violations on designs, as well as scams.

Vu Ngoc Son, a cybersecurity expert, said users should uninstall applications that do not work as they were described and report them.

Earlier this week, the Authority of Information Security also warned about the rise of football-betting websites, whose servers are located outside of Vietnam.