Scammers often make the "Cancel" button of their purchase prompt a "Where's Waldo" of sorts.

Other times it only appears after a few seconds.

Here, there just isn't a way to skip it at all.
You download the app, and it just doesn't work.

Unless you sign up for a $260/year subscription that is, which is what most people will do here.

And here's them pumping their deteriorating rating to 4.4 stars 2 days ago - classic.

The reviews?

1.8 stars
Keep the scams coming: bunco.squad@hey.com

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More from @keleftheriou

9 Feb
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: Live Wallpaper Maker - Live4K
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! Image
Read 21 tweets
6 Feb
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. Image
🤦

That's not what happened, @reddit, the downvote bot brigade just got activated. Image
Read 4 tweets
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:
Let's slide over to the next review in the carousel:
Read 25 tweets
5 Feb
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.
Read 4 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

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