Thread by @keleftheriou

🚨Apple’s @AppStore remains a hotbed of multi-million dollar scams🚨

1/ Here’s how:👇

Let’s search for “watch faces” - a popular Apple Watch search term - and start with the top organic result: “Watch Faces Gallery Collection”.

With 4.4 stars, thousands of ratings, and a fake “Editors’ Selection” badge (sigh), it looks like a solid app.

apps.apple.com/us/app/watch-f…

That “featured” 2-star review was a little concerning though. Let’s take a closer look at the “Most Helpful” reviews:🔍

“SCAMMERS”

“PLEASE READ!!!!!!!! Everyone please reach out to the App Store to complain!”

“very poor decision on Apple’s part to continue to let a thief like this sell apps in their store”

So Apple has been ignoring their own customers’ complaints for months…

My internal tool also shows that if we just consider the 112 written reviews, this app’s rating is 1.3-stars.☠️

Since people really hate this app, how does it have a 4.4 overall rating?🤨

Back to the search results, let’s now look at the prominent ad at the top:

“Watch Faces ®” (sigh) has 4.5 stars from 1.3K ratings, and a glowing “featured” review.

Seems like a high-quality app - or is it?

apps.apple.com/us/app/watch-f…

When we look deeper, a similar pattern emerges. There are only 33 reviews, averaging just 2.0 stars.☠️

Here’s what people are actually saying about this app:

As if that wasn’t enough, the same developer has:
- a $120/year “QR Code Reader ®” app (also 4.5 stars)
- a $144/year “Printer App for AirPrint” app (also 4.5 stars)
- a $144/year “PDF Editor ®“ app (also 4.5 stars)
- and many more apps with the same pattern…

As any developer will tell you, good ratings are VITAL for a business. They bring more downloads, thus more revenue.

This developer has so far grossed over $4,500,000!

😱💸

Out of that, Apple has already pocketed more than a MILLION dollars in commissions, by simply neglecting to police fake ratings or listen to these complaints - while ALSO charging for these Search Ads!

So how does this happen, exactly?🤔

Shady developers simply BUY fake ratings for their apps.

That’s it. That's the fuel that virtually all scams need, in order to sustain themselves.

Just open this Google search and you will find HUNDREDS of different “companies” to buy ratings from: google.com/search?q=buy+a…

Apple often lets scams stay up for months, even YEARS.

And if/when they take them down, scammers just open a new developer account.

Even worse, Apple - the company that claims to put users first - does NOT automatically refund the users who were scammed!

Why don’t they??🤔

Unless they’re on the hook for scam revenue or have competing app stores, Apple is disincentivized from doing much about it.

Sure, some users might spend less after being repeatedly scammed, but the pool of new and unsuspecting users is enormous, almost never-ending.

This has been happening for years, and I’ve personally found HUNDREDS of scams ever since I realized this was negatively affecting my own business - and still is!

theverge.com/2021/4/21/2238…

So now you know. “The apps you love. From the only place you can get them.”