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A top-grossing scam on the App Store

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Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#91

Post by flatline »

simonw wrote: post #60

I got scammed on the App Store a couple of weeks ago. I needed the SmartThings app for some Samsung home automation devices, searched for it, and installed this one: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/smart-things-smart-view-app/id... When it charged me a $20/year subscription (now cancelled) I thought "Wow, Samsung charging me for this feels pretty cheap of them, but I guess that's how they do things - after all, I found…

I have learned to always check the developer name, and if I'm not 100% sure, I don't install it. It's annoying because there are a bunch of them out there like this.

I've also seen the "free but not free" apps like in the twitter thread. Usually there is an invisible "X" in the top corner of the payment form that you can click to get past it and use the app's free features after all. My kids run into these all the time: they see an ad for a game, it has good reviews so I let them get it, it prompts them for payment. If you are clever you can sometimes get around it, but I've seen cheap old arcade game knock-offs asking for $30+/mo! This is not by any stretch the only developer making mad bank on a subpar app.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#92

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

socialist_coder wrote: post #52

The scam really is about the iOS Subscriptions and how its easy to have a free trial then auto-bill you for some absurd amount. Very easy to trick people into doing this. Apple should just remove Subscriptions completely and have app developers turn them into consumable IAPs that you have to buy every X months. The app developer can still do a free trial in their own code. Games do this all the time with "premium". Y…

> Apple should just remove Subscriptions completely and have app developers turn them into consumable IAPs that you have to buy every X months.

With my data going poof each time, I'm afraid that's a no. Even merely having to log in again, compared to the status quo, is way worse.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#93

Post by itsoktocry »

ksec wrote: post #36

Patrick McGee from Financial Times had a whole twitter thread [1] on it. It got everything from banning apps for competitive reason to Apple's FEAR ( Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk ) team saying the current App Store review process is inadequate. I am starting to think there is a much deeper problem with Apple, it is that without Steve Jobs, no one is being the yard stick of quality, especially in UX. A decade…

>I am starting to think there is a much deeper problem with Apple, it is that without Steve Jobs, no one is being the yard stick of quality, especially in UX.

I'd chalk it up to Apple being the biggest company on the planet, and the sheer scale of managing an enterprise that size. Nothing lasts forever.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#94

Post by fortran77 »

slobotron wrote: post #90
fortran77 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of this issue I've learned to never search for a manufacturer or company app in the app store. I go to the company's website and see if I can find an app store link to it there. It's nearly impossible for anyone--even the most savvy user--to identify which app is the real one and which one is a deceptive one.

Kind of funny that we trust Google's index of the whole www to take us to manufacturer's legitimate website, but don't trust Apple's own search of their curated store.

You don't need to trust Google. If you buy a Samsung phone, for example, their official domain would be printed in their documentation.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#95

Post by iudqnolq »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #9

The assertion in that title is patently false click-bait. Apple definitely cares about its customers being driven away from them. That doesn't mean they've caught all scams, or more importantly in this case have managed to automate detection of them all, definitely not as fast as folks online identify them. Also note that there are entire classes of scams that never get click baity titles because Apple DOES detect th…

This app is literally a fake medical product that pretends to detect your blood pressure via the camera and pretends not to charge you. It instead uses color recognition to detect if you're holding it against a finger, and if so displays a canned animation.

When someone on Twitter discovers an app making more revenue than Microsoft Word will "detect" the blood pressure of a reddish candy bar responding by reducing the star rating by 0.9 just doesn't cut it.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#97

Post by easton »

terrywilcox wrote: post #65

It's as if the people paying for this app aren't actually the ones complaining. Why wouldn't they complain if it was a scam? Because they're not actually using it. It's a money laundering app. If you're just laundering money through an app, it doesn't have to actually do anything. And if you make the price outrageously high, you can launder more money with fewer clicks and reduce the risk of some idiot actually buyin…

Who would launder money in a way that would not only require finding a developer and going through App Review, but also losing 30% in the process (plus however much that developer costs)?

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#98

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

Meanwhile they are regularly rejecting updates for legitimate, established apps, because the given reviewer didn’t like the way the pricing page was worded. It doesn’t matter that the same copy was used for the last 10 versions of the app, you must change it and re-submit for review :^)

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#99

Post by tartoran »

flatline wrote: post #91
simonw wrote: post #60

I got scammed on the App Store a couple of weeks ago. I needed the SmartThings app for some Samsung home automation devices, searched for it, and installed this one: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/smart-things-smart-view-app/id... When it charged me a $20/year subscription (now cancelled) I thought "Wow, Samsung charging me for this feels pretty cheap of them, but I guess that's how they do things - after all, I found…

I have learned to always check the developer name, and if I'm not 100% sure, I don't install it. It's annoying because there are a bunch of them out there like this. I've also seen the "free but not free" apps like in the twitter thread. Usually there is an invisible "X" in the top corner of the payment form that you can click to get past it and use the app's free features after all. My kids run into these all the ti…

Somewhat tangential but looking up names is not always safe either, they could be made up. Latest scam on YouTube is to reply to comments with a clone account of the owner of the channel. They copy everything but the scam itself is quite bad, they want you to call a w-h-a-t-s-u-p number or something dumb that I would never bite. Youtube does nothing to stop these even when heavily reported.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#100

Post by Tinyyy »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #89
xondono wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people judged Googles playstore with this criteria pitchforks wouldn’t cut it. This post to me sounds like someone claiming spam filters are worthless because an email got across. The relevant metric is how many scams aren’t there , not how many have managed to stay for some indeterminate amount of time.

> This post to me sounds like someone claiming spam filters are worthless because an email got across. If I'm literally prevented from using any other kind of spam filter, you bet I'd be complaining. > The relevant metric is how many scams aren’t there Would you please also prove there is definitely no teapot orbiting Mars, while we're at it?

> If I'm literally prevented from using any other kind of spam filter, you bet I'd be complaining.

Actually, you can use another kind of spam filter - your brain.

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