[Anchor]

Naver has filed a criminal complaint against the financial platform Toss for interference with business. Naver claims that Toss's practice of giving users points for solving quizzes has driven a surge in search traffic to Naver, significantly distorting search rankings.

Reporter Kim Hye-min has the details.

[Reporter]

This is the "attendance check mission" on the Toss app.

We tried the "find the related tag" mission.

After searching for a specific product on Naver's search bar, going to the product detail page, and finding the correct answer in the tags at the bottom, 5 won in points were credited.

There are also missions where users search for specific locations on Naver to find menu prices or input walking distances.

This is a so-called "app tech" marketing strategy that rewards users with small amounts of points in exchange for visiting the app every day.

It has been confirmed that regarding this marketing practice, Naver filed a complaint against Viva Republica, the operator of Toss, with the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency early this year.

The charges are interference with business and violations of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection.

Naver argues that when specific search terms are flooded into Naver Store and Naver Place, it distorts search rankings during the process, causing damage to general consumers and other business operators.

[Mr. A / Agency Representative: From the advertisers' perspective, they could have ranked first or second based on pure sales volume or basic traffic alone. But if they get pushed down to fifth or sixth place because of programs like this, a third of their sales vanish, and they have to spend more money just to avoid getting pushed back...]br />
While similar app tech marketing using Naver searches exists on other companies' apps as well, Toss's traffic volume is reportedly overwhelming, reaching millions of cases per day.

It was confirmed that Naver sent official notices to companies including Toss last year, demanding that they halt actions that could undermine the reliability of Naver's services, and that companies other than Toss replied that they had "stopped immediately."

The police received relevant data from Naver, questioned Naver employees as reference witnesses, and subsequently booked Toss officials, according to reports.

They plan to summon Toss-related individuals for questioning soon.

In response, Toss stated, "As this is a matter under police investigation, we cannot provide detailed comments."

Reported by Lee Hong-myung | Design by Park Tae-young | VJ: Jung Han-wook, Lee Ji-hwan