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Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#31

Post by pushcx »

echoangle wrote: post #20
blibble wrote: post #8

I don't think I've ever searched for something on the app store and not got a scam as the first result just tried it - my bank? I get crypto.com - train company app? knockoff app that charges extra fees - my broker? CFD gambling app - official government app for paying my tax? intuit product I dare to think how many people this lures in scammy ads plastered everywhere is what I'd expect from Google products not for t…

Can you share some search terms you tried? I never had this problem, but I’m also not in the US so it might be different here

Pretty much every brand or app I search for finds a competitor first. Searching for "robinhood" turns up an unaffiliated cryptocurrency app and "macrofactor" turns up a competing diet app, etc. App store search has been broken for at least a few years.

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#32

Post by habeanf »

swatcoder wrote: post #24

When I perform your search, I get legitimate results at the top, and I don't see the specific app from the Reddit thread. But about at about rank #7, I see an app that uses a distorted form of the same logo, a different unfamiliar publisher, a slightly altered title and a similar smattering of only a few reviews. It sounds like somebody is burning developer accounts to keep reposting the scam app. Not unlike people b…

Posted above the screen recording: https://streamable.com/y5nhy7

> You can't escape personal due diligence and "it was top ranked!" has never been that.

On one hand that's a fair point and I should've known better. OTOH I think it is legit to trust top app store search results to return quality apps, especially if there is a massive disparity between their quality. The scam app has obvious repetitive spam reviews. The developer's website is terrible and the submit button doesn't even work. This is basic quality control on apple's part. If every single app store user needs to manually vet every single app they install to the proper extent there would be a fraction of a fraction of the installs and respectively, a fraction of a fraction of the revenue.

Consider the extent of lawsuits between apple and companies with app store apps - does it not strike you that apple protects that revenue stream? Wouldn't it make sense to give app store users a sense of trust in the top search results?

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#33

Post by [deleted] »

openthc wrote: post #3

I thought the Apple platform had the best consumer experience and that's why folk love it -- it "just works" -- cause they keep the riff-raff out of their gated community. Perhaps they let this one slip through because their team was too busy dragging out the review process for our cannabis compliance application, they can only afford so many reviewers after all. We wouldn't want children accidentally getting their h…

[deleted]

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#34

Post by habeanf »

saalweachter wrote: post #30
habeanf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, and I've done both. My review doesn't appear in the list of reviews. What's crazy is that a scam app is the #1 organic search result for 'bitcoin wallet', above blockchain.com and coinbase.

(1) How much more valuable do you think it is to the scam app developer to appear at the top of the search results than for a legitimate wallet developer? (2) Do you think a legitimate wallet app will engage in the same black-hat SEO tactics a scam app developer will?

> (1) How much more valuable do you think it is to the scam app developer to appear at the top of the search results than for a legitimate wallet developer?

Well, the scammer got CAD $150k out of the reddit guy I linked to and I lost a slightly smaller amount - and we're just two out of who knows how many thousands of app store users that installed this app. I'd say people trust the top 5-10 results quite a lot.

> (2) Do you think a legitimate wallet app will engage in the same black-hat SEO tactics a scam app developer will?

I think all the black-hat SEO in the world should not be able to surpass the obvious value disparity compared to legit apps with hundreds of thousands of installs and hundreds of reviews.

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#35

Post by concinds »

pushcx wrote: post #31
echoangle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some search terms you tried? I never had this problem, but I’m also not in the US so it might be different here

Pretty much every brand or app I search for finds a competitor first. Searching for "robinhood" turns up an unaffiliated cryptocurrency app and "macrofactor" turns up a competing diet app, etc. App store search has been broken for at least a few years.

Do you mean ads or organic results?

Apple should remove App Store search ads altogether (I'm sure they won't). By definition they won't give you the app you searched for, because the keyword will be bought by a competitor or even a scam.

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#36

Post by Reason077 »

pushcx wrote: post #31
echoangle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some search terms you tried? I never had this problem, but I’m also not in the US so it might be different here

Pretty much every brand or app I search for finds a competitor first. Searching for "robinhood" turns up an unaffiliated cryptocurrency app and "macrofactor" turns up a competing diet app, etc. App store search has been broken for at least a few years.

> "Pretty much every brand or app I search for finds a competitor first."

You're going to hate Amazon.com.

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#37

Post by fingerlocks »

habeanf wrote: post #25
fingerlocks wrote: post #7

No repro. Same search string gives me the Bitcoin.com and the Coinbase app at the top. Scrolled through several dozen wallet apps and the one in the Reddit link never surfaced.

Here is a screen recording including this hacker news post + your comment & and a switch to the app store with the search phrase. The first result is the scam app. I scrolled down so you can see where serious apps are in the list of results. https://streamable.com/q2mulu

[flagged]

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#38

Post by gumby »

blibble wrote: post #8

I don't think I've ever searched for something on the app store and not got a scam as the first result just tried it - my bank? I get crypto.com - train company app? knockoff app that charges extra fees - my broker? CFD gambling app - official government app for paying my tax? intuit product I dare to think how many people this lures in scammy ads plastered everywhere is what I'd expect from Google products not for t…

I am still surprised that when I search for a specific app (as you did for your bank) I still see junk ads before the real app shows up. Apple should be better than that. They seem to have the same bad incentive Google search does.

What is CFD gambling? When I read “CFD” I always think of computational fluid dynamics and so “CFD gambling” sounds pretty cool to me. Obviously I do know I’m just overfitting to a TLA and I’d like to know what it actually means.

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#39

Post by Animats »

Apple statement on why the EU requiring open app stores is bad:

Schiller, an Apple veteran who once ran its marketing machine, said the moves to break the company’s closed ecosystem for software will undermine the privacy and security the company has worked to build into its products and services. “This isn’t our first choice,” he said. “We always want to have the highest standard everywhere in the world but we also have the requirement to meet the legal requirements in the local markets. “In the App Store we have a lot of signals that we are looking for every day to find scams and stop them,” Schiller said. “With these new marketplaces we won’t have visibility into those issues.”

Right.

Re: Scammed by the top result for 'Bitcoin wallet' in Apple App Store

#40

Post by iscrewyou »

blibble wrote: post #8

I don't think I've ever searched for something on the app store and not got a scam as the first result just tried it - my bank? I get crypto.com - train company app? knockoff app that charges extra fees - my broker? CFD gambling app - official government app for paying my tax? intuit product I dare to think how many people this lures in scammy ads plastered everywhere is what I'd expect from Google products not for t…

> I don't think I've ever searched for something on the app store and not got a scam as the first result

It’s cool to crap on Apple and all these days but this is all categorically false. What you are referring to is the Ad on the top of the page. It’s clearly labeled as ad and has a light blue box around the whole ad.

I tried all those things you mentioned and the first result after the clearly labeled ad is what I searched for.

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