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Why not blame Trezor for allowing a fake app to steal money from his hardware wallet? Did he buy the wallet thinking it would make scams impossible?
Because Trezor doesn't control the iOS app store?
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I'm boggled that the US government lets Apple rake in 30% for commerce on the app store, despite it being only one of two games in town for commerce. It'd be like only having two options for cars (Ford and Tesla), and forcing restaurants, stores, etc. to pay 30% of their gross revenue to Tesla for their having brought you. It's truly bizarro world. Make no pretense. This isn't about protecting consumers, this is abou…
Don't derail. There are other threads about Apple's store and their vig.
Don't ask for censorship to protect a brand you value. Apple is not beyond reproach.
Would the number of scams in the top 1000 be higher than 2% if the App Store was not tightly controlled? It doesn't follow that, since some bad things have gotten past the gatekeeper, we should get rid of the gatekeeper.
That’s unclear. A couple of things to consider, both of which are helping scammers currently: - A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. - The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable. I can see how a more trustworthy ratings system and a more hones…
This is the "a lot of scammers are better than a few sophisticated scammers" argument, which I disagree with. Users themselves have varying levels of sophistication (unsophisticated scams work just fine on some people), and there are other mechanisms like chargebacks which can unwind damage after the fact.
> The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable.
I have no insight into how well Apple is doing combating fake reviews, but no anti-abuse system is perfect. There is the same question here: would things be worse if Apple didn't police reviews at all.
The App Store is broken but it is the least broken of the app stores.
This stuff happens despite the tight control, not because of it. If it was uncurated, it would be a cesspool like the Google play store (or ...shudder... the "competing" stores).
Having a paid app that reads QR codes is not necessarily a scam.
The article admits that 2/3 of the apps they reported were taken down.
The article claims: "If consumers were to have access to alternative app stores or other methods of distributing software, Apple would be a lot more likely to take this problem more seriously"
Yet then says: "Apple isn’t the only company that struggles with this issue: They’re also on Google’s Play Store, which is available on its Android mobile operating system. But unlike Apple, Google doesn’t claim that its Play Store is curated."
...so lack of competing stores or presence of (imperfect) curation is not the cause, because Google did not even begin to attempt to solve this problem. Play store apps, unless proven otherwise, are generally malware you carry with yourself every day, with potential access to everything in your device because the OS is nowhere near locked down compared to Apple counterpart. Hell, most Android devices ship with undeletable malware from vendors etc.
Apple model is broken, but it is the least broken out there. Instead of admitting that, article tries to be a hit piece trying to make the Apple model look worse for the ongoing trial.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s unclear. A couple of things to consider, both of which are helping scammers currently: - A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. - The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable. I can see how a more trustworthy ratings system and a more hones…
> A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. This is the "a lot of scammers are better than a few sophisticated scammers" argument, which I disagree with. Users themselves have varying levels of sophistication (unsophisticated scams work just fine on some people), and there are other mechanisms like chargebacks which can unwind damage after t…
> Apple used to have a button, just under the ratings and reviews section in the App Store, that said “report a problem,” which allowed users to report inappropriate apps. Based on discussions among Apple customers on Apple’s own website, the feature was removed some time around 2016.
Why would they remove the ability for people to easily report apps?
The article's premise does not make sense. This stuff happens despite the tight control, not because of it. If it was uncurated, it would be a cesspool like the Google play store (or ...shudder... the "competing" stores). Having a paid app that reads QR codes is not necessarily a scam. The article admits that 2/3 of the apps they reported were taken down. The article claims: "If consumers were to have access to alter…
They've distorted our free market into "Apple's market".
They tax ingress to 50% of Americans and don't let you establish a relationship with your customers. Beyond that, they make you dance through hoops to build and deploy software.
It's a travesty that they won.
If this continues, businesses will be paying Apple for customers brought to them by Apple iCar.
The worst thing is, people have this belief that Apple is somehow protecting them, so they offload the critical thinking to Apple and lower their own guards. For example, a person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings [1]. edit: to be clear, I'm not blaming Apple for not stopping these scams, at their scale, it's just practically impossible to…
I have sympathy for the person in this story, but I think shifting the blame to Apple in this case is ludicrous. I'm still somewhat shaking my head that someone went through all of the trouble of using a hardware wallet, and then entered his key words into the first app he downloaded. If anything I think this story is just a prime example of why irreversible crypto transactions are an absolute nightmare for the gener…
The problem is that if you are associated with a crime committed in the United States in any way (besides being a very distant third-person witness with no associations whatsoever to the individual), and you are not a crime victim or an individual reporting the crime, you are almost always considered to be an _accessory to the crime_ which is a misdemeanor (go to jail for up to 365 days) or felony (go to prison for over 365 days) state level (has parole for prisoners) or federal level (effectively has no parole for prisoners) criminal offense, which the police will arrest you for and charge you with, while the person committing the misdemeanor/felony gets charged with whatever crime they perpetrated.
For example, if your "acquaintance" shoplifts at a store and gets caught, and you don't stop or report them: you will get charged as being an accessory to a crime and you're going to jail.
Also, if you are involved in an altercation in any way, the cop can put everyone involved in handcuffs and charge them, even if you never got physically or verbally violent.
There are also catch-all laws in the US that one can go to prison for, basically for acting in "bad faith" but never actually doing anything else criminally wrong.
This is why you never talk to the police, ever. They will twist your statements in the wildest ways imaginable. If you get pulled over by the police, you should practice, every single time, saying as little as possible to the officer.
This has never happened to me personally, but, everyone needs to know this: If the police in America start questioning you and it gets into a detailed discussion, you stop right there and say: "No comment: I need to talk to my lawyer first."
The worst thing is, people have this belief that Apple is somehow protecting them, so they offload the critical thinking to Apple and lower their own guards. For example, a person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings [1]. edit: to be clear, I'm not blaming Apple for not stopping these scams, at their scale, it's just practically impossible to…
I have sympathy for the person in this story, but I think shifting the blame to Apple in this case is ludicrous. I'm still somewhat shaking my head that someone went through all of the trouble of using a hardware wallet, and then entered his key words into the first app he downloaded. If anything I think this story is just a prime example of why irreversible crypto transactions are an absolute nightmare for the gener…