The App Store has a *massive* fake ratings problem👇
You: an honest developer, working hard for a 4.5 star rating.
Your competitor: a $12M App Store scam, undetected for years.
1/🧵
This app was released early 2016.
With a 4.5 rating from over 150k users, and a price of free, it definitely seems worth downloading:
Upon first launch, we’re presented with what amounts to a $260/year auto-renewing subscription. I didn’t notice the X button located all the way up there, so I’m gonna assume there’s only one way to proceed here - all those users can’t be wrong, and it’s a free trial after all!
If you ever wondered what scammers can do, my Reddit post exposing them hit the r/Apple frontpage with 100 votes but just got mass-downvoted into oblivion.
And I mean, down to ZERO votes.
The truth won't be hidden for too long, but the scammers surely want to keep it that way.
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.
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.