This next ratings scam is of the YOLO variety, from a company called "Followers Unfollowers Tracker".

They casually buy almost up to a *thousand* fake ratings in a single day.

Why even bother doing this slowly, over time? As soon as their average drops below their liking, BAM!
And just to keep it consistent, they casually buy ONE HUNDRED positive reviews in a day - a far cry from their average of *zero* per day.
The real reviews desperately try to warn others, but get totally drowned out by the fake ones.

You know the story by now.

Apple isn't even trying, and it's infuriating. And the scammers notice that, and become bolder and bolder.

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More from @keleftheriou

6 Feb
Up to now, I've been in the "Apple *wants* to do the right thing" camp. My viewpoint is starting to change.

How to spot a $5M/year scam on the @AppStore, in 5 minutes flat:👇
4.6 stars, with over 80,000 ratings, and a glowing 5-star "featured" review: Image
Let's slide over to the next review in the carousel: Image
Read 25 tweets
4 Feb
So once again, Apple took down another app I exposed but is cool with the developer running their other, even *more* profitable scam. I'm speechless.

Below you see "Live Wallpaper Z", allowed to keep stealing $40k/month from unsuspecting people.

How do I know?👇
The scheme is pretty simple. Launch the app, quickly get *hundreds* of fake ratings per day, and establish a good-and-hard-to-move overall rating.

Then no fake ratings for a while, until they're needed again.
In their download and grossing ranks, you see that the volume of ratings is totally unrelated to downloads, and their revenue keeps rising along nicely, due to the nature of the auto-renewing $8/week ($416/year) subscriptions.
Read 8 tweets
2 Feb
Folks, WE DID IT!!

We shined a light on these scammers, and Apple TOOK THEM DOWN!👏

The bad news?
While the “KeyWatch” $300k/month scam was removed, Apple did *not* take down their developer account.

Not only that, but their other scam, “GPS Speedometer”, remains on the App Store stealing $200k/month from unsuspecting people, with $416/year subscriptions.😱

UNREAL!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“Accurate. Clean. Customizable. Simple. NO ADS!! If your work truck has a bad speedometer, this app will work.” wrote Camilla Baumbach, the exact same phrasing Jim Hoberek used a year earlier about “DigiHUD Speedometer”, an Android app on Google Play.
Read 10 tweets
31 Jan
The App Store has a big problem👇

You: an honest developer, working hard to improve your IAP conversions.
Your competitor: a $2M/year scam running rampant.

1/🧵
Over the years, I've worked incredibly hard to create what I think is the best Apple Watch keyboard app in the world. When I started, I had two goals:

1. Make it possible to type on a watch at a reasonable speed
2. Stay ahead of any competition that might pop up
While I believe I achieved my first goal and even became a top paid app of 2020, I ultimately failed to stay ahead of the competition - but not for reasons I anticipated.
Read 21 tweets
20 Jun 20
For the longest time, I've been afraid to speak up about my story with App Review, fearing I'd put my popular app at risk. I've now decided that being transparent and sharing my experience to help others is worth it, so here it goes:👇
App update rejections can be annoying and frustrating at times, but I appreciate and respect the review process - I believe that it mostly benefits end users. Even getting rejected for things that had previously been ok is something that I've grown to expect.
But this was different. In January 2019, I had not submitted an update for "FlickType" in over two months. Blind and visually impaired users were happily using my iOS and watch keyboard every day. Then, out of the blue, I got the message that made my heart drop:
Read 21 tweets

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