Thread by @keleftheriou

You think the @AppStore is “a place you can trust”?

🚨Think again!🚨

How to spot a $5M/year scam, in 5 minutes flat:👇

This app has 4.1 stars with over 1,000 ratings, and a really nice 5-star featured review:

Let’s slide over to the next reviews, which are not immediately visible:

Hmm, let’s check out their website, onicorntechnology.com.

Looks… normal?

Clicking on the the red “Learn more” button takes us to google.com. Maybe an honest mistake.

Let’s take a closer look at who these really photogenic people are…

There’s only one co-founder, Robby Lee - maybe the other(s) left? Anyway, searching for their names doesn’t turn up anything relevant.

What about a reverse image search?

Yup. They’re using stock photos, since scammers rarely use their real identity to do their “business”:

What about the two apps they showcase? One’s just a design from Dribbble, the other from Behance - but has been blurred to hide the “Lorem ipsum” placeholder text it actually has:

Now let’s go back and take a closer look at the reviews. It seems that the developer is running deceptive ads. People are warning others, many don’t know how to cancel their subscription or get a refund, and some even wonder: why is Apple ignoring their reports?

So how on earth does this app have a 4.1 rating?

Take a look at these streams of glowing 5-star reviews, many appearing on the exact same day.

Notice how they all have roughly the same length, and non-sensical author names - all with the same “First Last” name format:

While Apple practices their security theater, scammers simply buy fake App Store ratings & reviews left and right. It’s really easy!

This page will be an eye-opener for most people:
quora.com/What-are-the-b…

“Apple can’t be perfect”, I hear you say. “There are over 2M apps on the App Store!”

Well, with over 1M downloads and $1.4M revenue so far, this app has become the #335 highest grossing app across the *entire* App Store, with a $5M/year rate.

Data from @Appfigures:

This is only one of many multi-million dollar App Store scams that sometimes run unchecked for *years*. Apple doesn’t even bother scrutinizing the top grossing apps for the security of their own customers.

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1357938977748078594?s=20

And it’s not just that they don’t bother.

They even go out of their way to make it *harder* to spot these scams: They literally removed the “Report a problem” button they used to have on each app’s App Store page!

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1381002562782908417?s=20

So why does Apple allow this to happen?

“The answer turns out to be as simple as it is depressing: Apple's App Store was never designed to work. At least not in the way the company purports that it does.”

world.hey.com/dhh/the-app-st…

The scam: apps.apple.com/us/app/id15359…

Keep sending me scams at [e-mail]

See you next time!✌️

While I have you here:

Go get vaccinated, and retweet for visibility!🙏

Turns out, the app is even more fake than I thought!

https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1381655446432358402?s=20