Apple's $64 Billion-a-Year App Store Isn't Catching the Most Egregious Scams (theverge.com) 54
A one-man Bunco Squad is poking holes in Apple's App Store image. From a report: Recently, I reached out to the most profitable company in the world to ask a series of basic questions. I wanted to understand: how is a single man making the entire Apple App Store review team look silly? Particularly now that Apple's in the fight of its life, both in the courts and in Congress later today, to prove its App Store is a well-run system that keeps users safe instead of a monopoly that needs to be broken up. That man's name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he's made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store.
He's repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a "free trial" of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don't understand how to cancel. "It's a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place," he tells The Verge. There's a lot to unpack there: fake free trials, fake reviews, subscription awareness. We could write an entire story about each. Today, I'd like to focus on how one guy could find what Apple's $64-billion-a-year App Store apparently cannot, because the answer is remarkable.
He's repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a "free trial" of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don't understand how to cancel. "It's a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place," he tells The Verge. There's a lot to unpack there: fake free trials, fake reviews, subscription awareness. We could write an entire story about each. Today, I'd like to focus on how one guy could find what Apple's $64-billion-a-year App Store apparently cannot, because the answer is remarkable.
Security is an illusion. (Score:2)
Security is not an illusion (Score:3, Interesting)
Perfect knowable security is an illusion. But a chain link fence still averts most easy or casual intrusion. It also serves as white line on the road to tell people this is a boundary and thus redirectss the clueless or fools also.
Just because security isn't perfect doesen't lessen how much it improves things.
Should we just get rid of all security and passwords because none of it is perfect? duh.
I love the apple ecosystem precisely because by paying a bit more I spend a lot less on fretting over security.
Re: Security is not an illusion (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the TL;DR of your post:
At the end of the day, security theater is all that I really need, and I'm willing to pay extra money to get it.
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Not very remarkable at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, I'd like to focus on how one guy could find what Apple's $64-billion-a-year App Store apparently cannot, because the answer is remarkable.
Spoiler alert: it's because they get a 30% cut of money from fraudulent apps, so of course they aren't pro-active about removing them.
It's only remarkable to people who actually believe Apple's claims about how their walled garden is "safe."
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Likewise, you canâ(TM)t just click every link that claims to be from your bank. Your bank does its best to protect your money, it is legally obligated to, but
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Likewise, you canâ(TM)t just click every link that claims to be from your bank. Your bank does its best to protect your money, it is legally obligated to, but canâ(TM)t do so if the client is careless.
I have seen and left reviews on many suspicious apps. It is up to the user to not load apps that promise free movies and free games.
Sure, but do banks make bold claims [apple.com] such as
"The App Store is a safe and trusted place for customers to discover apps"
or how about [apple.com]
"For over a decade, the App Store has proved to be a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps... apps we offer are held to the highest standards for privacy, security, and content.
Privacy and security. Built into everything we do.
Security for every app. At every level."
Apple goes on and on about security, trust, safety,... ad nauseam
100% of apps are automatically scre
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Feels like two conversations.
Emphasizers saying "they're selling an illusion and the masses are drinking it up and even parroting the claims"
Apologists saying "it's not 100% perfect nothing is 100% perfect this article is silly"
Since they aren't the same point, they are not mutually exclusive. Neither of you is wrong, there's just one of you off topic. Moving the conversation posts, probably not intentionally.
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It IS "safe and trusted", it's just that the "safe" part is barely functional and the "trust" part is unwarranted.
So yeah, even though it's a minefield it's still trusted. (Not by me, but you get my drift.)
Re:Not very remarkable at all (Score:4)
People who believe that have already spent thousands on their products and furthermore have an emotional investment. They'll find some reason to disregard or quickly forget this news, rather than risk their peace of mind.
Not really a scam... (Score:5, Informative)
"Scam" doesn't seem like the right term here. If the user selects the "3 day free trial, then $9.99/week" option... they're then billed $9.99 a week after their 3 day free trial. The "then $9.99/week" bit isn't even buried in fine print. It's right up front. At least the fact that it's going through the App Store subscription model means that it's dead simple [apple.com] to cancel.
Re:Not really a scam... (Score:5, Informative)
As to the "scam" apps, like you pointed out, their example is a horrible one as the terms of service are right up front and clearly inform the user of what they're signing up for when they agree to the terms.
Apple has a history of looking at apps that are reported by users as "scams" and will take appropriate action when warranted. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org])
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Yeah. Another click-bait article from both /. and The Verge. Fake reviews are a thing that all online stores, review sites, etc., combat on a daily basis. Yet TFA says nothing about either this "researcher," or The Verge, actually reporting these "fake review" as such to Apple.
Wow!
From the article: "Eleftheriou tells me that Apple has removed over 100 apps due to his reports"; ... It’s still on the App Store. Never got removed."; ... Apple didn’t remove that app for two whole months, and won’t tell us the reasons for the delay."
"... that app that John Gruber helped draw attention to [It currently has a 4.1 rating, despite countless negative reviews] in 2019
"On February 8th, we [The Verge] brought a bunch of these scams to Apple’s attention
So, in fact the r
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After actually reading the article though one might be moved to ask the question: What does Apple feel warrants the appropriate action, because it doesn't seem to match my expectations.
W-w-what the?
Um, excuse me ....
Let me tell you something — you’ll be told what your expectations are, and you’ll be told when they’ve been met, capiche?
If we wanted you to think ... well .. . we never want you to think, so you don’t need to worry about that.
Do you want this identity or not? I m
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Apple has a history of looking at apps that are reported by users as "scams" and will take appropriate action when warranted.
It’s no use, some people just don’t know how to think different. They deserve our pity, not our efforts to educate them.
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Did you read the article?
First the user is tricked into believing that the Safari ad pop-up came from Apple themselves, then they are led into a store full of fake five star ratings of an app that fails to deliver.
Do you think Apple is neither capable, nor competent enough to catch those two steps?
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Do you think Apple is neither capable, nor competent enough to catch those two steps?
Apple loves us, and, like good parents, they’re practicing tough love and preparing us for the “real world”. Only this way, they do it in a controlled environment where the money goes to them instead of some terrorist organization or worse, Google.
In turn, they use that money to develop magical things that improve our lives, such as monitor stands and charger-less phones.
Of course, some are not enlighten
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It appears that these apps prey on people who don't know how to cancel through the app store by giving them a useless customer service number to call if they want to cancel.
And then you have all the fake 5-star reviews, misleading people into thinking the charge, no matter what it is, is reasonable and appropriate for the app. If your eyesight is failing, just make sure the app has 5 stars and you're good, right?
So these scams don't target people like you and me, they target people like grandma who are more
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Fair enough. I think I would still describe these apps as "predatory" rather than "scammy". They're delivering something with clearly stated terms... but those terms are scummy and take advantage of those who are less informed. Not sure what Apple can do to totally protect users from that. Some are going to fall victim even if the apps have terrible ratings. I guess just take down the apps that have the highest rate of refund requests? That opens a whole other can of worms, though, where Apple has to sta
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"Scam" doesn't seem like the right term here. If the user selects the "3 day free trial, then $9.99/week" option... they're then billed $9.99 a week after their 3 day free trial. The "then $9.99/week" bit isn't even buried in fine print. It's right up front. At least the fact that it's going through the App Store subscription model means that it's dead simple [apple.com] to cancel.
Yeah, I’ve seen some pretty misleading ones. In almost no cases is such a charge willful and fully understood, and only r
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"Scam" doesn't seem like the right term here. If the user selects the "3 day free trial, then $9.99/week" option... they're then billed $9.99 a week after their 3 day free trial. The "then $9.99/week" bit isn't even buried in fine print. It's right up front. At least the fact that it's going through the App Store subscription model means that it's dead simple [apple.com] to cancel.
Are the million fake reviews and fake contact info similarly legitimate?
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"Scam" doesn't seem like the right term here. If the user selects the "3 day free trial, then $9.99/week" option... they're then billed $9.99 a week after their 3 day free trial. The "then $9.99/week" bit isn't even buried in fine print. It's right up front. At least the fact that it's going through the App Store subscription model means that it's dead simple [apple.com] to cancel.
Would any user actually accept those terms if they fully understood them?
If the answer is overwhelmingly "no" then they're scams.
Since the Apple is managing the subscription it seems like it should be simple for Apple to fix this problem as well. When purchasing the subscription based app the iPhone should show the user something like:
The free trial is 3 days
As of April 24th, 2021 you will be charged $9.99 / week
This works out to approximately $43.29 / month
And $519.48 / year
How many of those apps would ge
Apple is in bed with the scammers (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it's obvious Apple has no interest in removing these scam apps, since they make a profit from them. As demonstrated in the article you could remove 99% of all of these scam apps by paying just a single intern to go through the list every day and block the scam apps. As usual they simply just don't care.
Fight of its life? (Score:3)
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Walled Garden (Score:4, Funny)
The wall is 2 feet tall.
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The wall is 2 feet tall.
I was thinking something along that lines as well
Re: Walled Garden (Score:2)
You saw what almost happened to Wesley Crusher for jumping over the wall...darn near got him killed...darn it.
Its hard (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to believe that Apple is trying, but it is likely a game of cat and mouse. Scammers work hard to stay ahead of the approval process and are probably aware of where the automated checks fail. At the same time Apple probably is still catching more problematic apps than Google does on the Play Store.
On the other hand, the biggest scam still feels like apps pushing for subscriptions, without necessarily doing the work to provide continuing value.
Re: Its hard (Score:5, Insightful)
You're ignoring the fact that one guy is finding a bunch of these. It's not as hard as Apple wants you to think.
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Most app store apps have hit peak maturity but without any ongoing maintenance they break or get obsoleted by IOS updates.
It seems inevitable that the "$1 apps" bonanza would never last and that subscriptions would end up being the result.
I just can't believe the number of apps that want $20/year.
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I'd also like to believe that Apple is trying, but there's no evidence to back that up. I occasionally run into apps that have egregious GDPR violations (e.g. forced consent, data transfers to third countries without an established mechanism for safeguarding the rights of the data subject, empty privacy policies, etc.), but which were published and made available to the EU region anyways. Whatever kind of review these apps are getting is cursory at best - most of this could even be caught just by static che
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It's also down to judgement.
Apple's reviews catch technically malfunctioning apps. Apps that aren't doing what they need to do.
Apple obviously doesn't want to police app models - after all, the last thing they want is a developer to come up with a clever app that needs a subscription but to deny them the ability to do it because it's "scammy". So Apple doesn't really want ot touch apps that might rely on an oddball business model. They can clamp down on some business models like using invasive ad tracking a
Re: Its hard (Score:2)
High subscription prices = scams? (Score:3)
Lots of "free" apps are trial period followed by automatic subscription renewal unless canceled. That's not a scam, it's failure on the part of the customer to actually read the terms of what they're downloading. Personally, I find the subscription cost of a lot of main-line software apps (Adobe, Micro$oft, etc.) to be exorbitant and they all auto-renew unless canceled, but they're not scams either.
Re:High subscription prices = scams? (Score:4, Informative)
How could you know that? (Score:3)
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There is a story here but the headline is a reach.
Yes, but it's good clickbait.
We make it too costly for Apple to catch more (Score:3)
Apple pays a reputational cost if they accidentally remove a marginally anti-social app. If they let an obvious scam continue, it doesn't really hurt them much.
What's the rational choice, the high cost or the low cost?
Switch ... (Score:2)
One Strategy I Follow (Score:2)
I don't link the App Store to a credit card. I only load money into it with store bought cash cards. The worst they can do is zero out whatever my current balance is (usually not much).
Just like Youtube (Score:2)
keeping malicious videos deceiving users online because they get a lot of views.
Just like Apple, their moderation is broken and they don't respond to users reporting 'inappropriate' content.
It's a bit like robodialers (Score:2)
If you think about it, scam app store based subscriptions are like robodialers. Everybody hates robodialers but the phone company doesn't care because they are making money off every call. Apple is too. They will probably eventually put a stop to it or find a way to do so on the grounds that it tarnishes the company image. The phone system is so fragmented and balkanized that no one company can pull the plug on scammers. So, if you think opening up iOS to competing app stores is a good idea, this might
And I thought you meant iDevice sales... m (Score:2)
I mean, compared to that, everything else is small change.