App scams

Written by

This is just terrible. Not Apple’s fault, but there definitely has to be a way to track this.



  • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

    iOS is winning! :-)

  • Tvaddic

    The this is completely different from Android piracy comments come In 3 2 1…

  • lucascott

    A way to flag problem apps that then removes them from the store until it is reviewed would be good. A system that detects multiple very quickly posts 5 star ads wouldn’t hurt either. Especially if they all pop up say in the first 12 hours of the app being live, from the same geography, form review codes etc.

    Perhaps even detecting apps where the text etc is changed within the first 12 hours of going live would be good also

  • http://www.facebook.com/mattlqx Matt Kulka

    But it is Apple’s fault. If they took fraud more seriously and put in place a refund or flagging system, then this problem would be far less hurtful to consumers. Simple app review isn’t the hammer that will solve all issues, no one tool is.

  • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

    What are the numbers for this sort of behavior? How many scam apps are there in the iTunes store?

  • http://twitter.com/plaztiksoundz Rodrigo Freitas

    This is a real problem that needs an urgent way of being detected or reported. In the Portuguese app store, there are countless $2.99 “Android lock screen” apps, that are obviously scams, all of them by developers named “Nhung Nguyen Thi Tuyet” etc etc. All of these apps have 5 star ratings by people called “Margie B. Dollar” or “Ralph S. Lane”.

    All english names (obviously fake ones) and all of them with reviews written in Portuguese, using key words like “brilliant” or “excellent”, etc.

    These apps have been on the store for months now. Some of them were even on the top paid charts. It’s just ridiculous.

  • http://twitter.com/DumaStudetto Duma Studetto

    When developers exploit weaknesses in the Play Store that equals Android/Google bad. When developers exploit a weakness with the App Store that does not equal Apple’s fault.

  • rj

    Not sure why Apple gets a pass here. Its their store. Further, if you read the comments, it sounds like it took them a week to remove the offending app.