Instagram's URL Blackhole

Post by mitemte » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #15

samename wrote: post #6

Ironic the Apple App store allows a "phone antivirus" to exist.

Almost unbelievable that they allow this - except of course they do, because scamware makes a ton of money via in-app purchase, and Apple gets 30%, so of course they do. I'm sure people will come out of the woodwork now to white knight for Apple and spin this somehow. But anything that offends their business model can be removed in minutes, while software that by its title violates the App Store rules is just here in…

The App Store has done a great job of training users to think that anything downloaded from it is somehow safe. In reality, Apple’s static code analysis and human review processes are flawed and people need to exercise way more caution than they do.

Post by flomo » Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 7:06 AM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #35

flomo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely intentional because they want to filter out anyone who can see how scammy it looks, so they don't waste their time. This is bulk spam stuff. If they are actually targeting you, it will look very real.

I don't buy it. The actor running the website likely gets paid for every user that installs the app or possibly even every user they direct at the app. Even in the unlikely case that they get paid for achieving some later payoff, the "work" on the way there is almost certainly 100% automated so there is no harm in spraying the attack more widely (as opposed to Nigeria scams where pre-AI, pre-slave-farm, the scammers…

Assume is just step 1 in the scam funnel, the payoff is really a later targeted conjob.

Re: Instagram's URL Blackhole

Re: Instagram's URL Blackhole