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‘Fleeceware’ apps overcharge users for basic app functionality
- paulcole 7y agoI’ve always thought this would be a money laundering opportunity. Sell an app for an outrageously high price, buy App Store gift cards with dirty cash, and then buy your app from yourself. You could almost certainly get an army of cheap labor to buy your app on their phones if you gave them a gift card worth say 110% of the app’s cost. You’d lose a pretty big chunk to App Store fees and taxes but it’d be clean.
- NavekM 7y agoIt's 30% for App Store I attended a money laundering course and that was about the going rate for large value sums.
- sdinsn 7y ago> I attended a money laundering course Hmmm? Hopefully from an anti-laundering perspective, right?
- NeutronStar 7y agoNah, just prison.
- maximente 7y agoyou mean that launderers are typically taking 30% cut from dirty amount to launder the money?
- matharmin 7y agoTheir "profit" would probably be much less than that - they have their own overheads for doing the actual laundering.
- mruts 7y agoI wouldn’t surprised if money laundering takes a 50% off your pre-laundered money. It’s a funny world when some people are paying to avoid taxes and some paying to pay taxes!
- Jyaif 7y agoAfter the 30% Apple takes, you still have to pay tax.
- MarkyC4 7y agoIt's probably still easier (and with less loss) to sell $500 gift cards for $450 on eBay
- imgabe 7y agoProbably more obvious though if you're moving a ton of gift cards on eBay.
- Lordarminius 7y agoBut does this scale ? People seeking to launder money reckon in large sums.
- goldcd 7y agoI'd agree. should I ever have thought about ways to launder money, it's the ability to scale, not so much the % that's important.
- ISL 7y agoSeems like that'd be a tricky proposition. There are a lot of people who would be happy to buy your $500 gift cards at $450.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TMWNN 7y agoI've sold Amazon and Best Buy gift cards for more than face value on eBay. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/6uypt5/what_to_spend_itunes_gift_cards_on/dlwoqgc/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/6uypt5/what_to_spend...
- cameronbrown 7y agoExcept it'd be fully traceable to you if it was discovered. Not to mention it probably sticks out like a sore thumb analytics wise.
- cat199 7y ago> to you you mean, to your fake identity??
- skymt 7y agoThere are a few common scams that directly demand Google Play or iTunes gift cards from the victim. The most depressing one I've heard about is a phone scam where the caller claims to be from the IRS and demands that the victim pay some overdue taxes in the form of gift cards. This is common enough that I've seen notices specifically warning about it on the gift-card displays at drug stores. The fact that this scheme apparently works says a lot about America's civics education.
- nscalf 7y agoI disagree about the civic education. Everyone knows the IRS doesn't take gift cards, it's more about taking advantage of people when they have a panic response. You get a call from the government saying you're going to jail if you don't pay them right now, you may panic. If you panic, what are the odds that you're going to get yourself under control before you do something stupid? I've seen this happen to a very bright coworker of mine, it's all about taking advantage of human fear.
- skymt 7y agoThat's true. (And this is tangential anyway.) I do think that a greater familiarity with how the government works could help in that moment of panic, reducing the self-doubt of "I don't think this sounds right, but what if I'm wrong?"
- inetknght 7y ago> Everyone knows the IRS doesn't take gift cards If that were the case then nobody would fall for the scam.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoTo follow up on the other response to your comment, remember that for these scammers, this is their job, and they do it over and over again, day in and day out. They know what strategies work and what doesn't, and manipulating people to doing something stupid is their whole goal. They are experts in scamming people, and the people they are calling are not experts in detecting scams. It is important to encourage people to trust their Spidey sense, most people know something seems off when these calls come in. But we need not trash people for falling for scams.
- FireBeyond 7y agoI've seen people doing this with Turo. Sorry, but if you're renting out your Chrysler 300C at $550/day and it's booked (not just unavailable) for weeks at a time... ... that's not legitimate. Someone is laundering money, there. The best bit is if you're coordinating it, you don't even lose access to the vehicle, because there's no verification that an exchange of property took place.
- cc439 7y agoThat's a pretty clever idea and an easy way to clean $200k a year.
- hnburnsy 7y agoDoes Turo accept gift cards? Not clear how the cash gets turned legit. Thx
- rurp 7y agoI think it would work if the scammer put their car up as the rental and used a fake/stolen identity to overpay for it. As long as the fake buyer doesn't get linked to the scammer's real identity, the proceeds will look legit.
- CPLX 7y agoYeah but what about the other half of the transaction? That person needs to have identity verified and a license in the system. That doesn’t sound like a good starting point to a laundering scheme.
- FireBeyond 7y agoIf you're a dealer? "Sign up for this site. I'll give you $5,000 to put in your bank account. You're going to 'rent' my car, except I won't actually give you my car. In exchange, I'll give you a discount on your drugs for the next six months." Drug addicts in the throes of withdrawal, or 'savvier'? Absolutely would go for such "deals" like this. And really, it's probably fairly low risk - the worst that is likely to happen is that Turo disables your account.
- _jal 7y agoIt has been suggested that Amazon has been used for this, too. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sold-amazon-money-laundering https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sol...
- benologist 7y agoWhat are the counterfeiters doing if not exploiting the certainty that Amazon will provide the absolute least amount of oversight their lawyers can defend some years from now... https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead-poisoning-2019-8 https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead-poiso...
- chapium 7y agoWhy even bother with changing the price
- afterburner 7y agoAnd Google is allowing this.
- point78 7y agoI fail to see the problem here. There are dozens of these apps offered for free, some the developer decides to charge per month. User just has to find the free ones. Should Google now tell app developers what to charge? That's ridiculous.
- mirimir 7y agoNo. But Google and Apple ought to require clear disclosure of price and conditions. Also, free trials shouldn't transition to paid usage without explicit authorization.
- point78 7y agoOk and your first point, but your second point...That's exactly what a free trial is by definition. It's free for a period of days until you are a paying member.
- mirimir 7y agoNot really. Payment should require authorization at the time of payment. I mean, what's the point of a free trial if you must commit to paying in order to start the trial? I do understand that this is a common dark pattern. But common or not, it ought to be illegal. And these bullshit apps are perfect examples of why. So is the New York Times, but that's a different fight.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThe correct way to opt out of the trial can sometimes require leaving the Google ecosystem, i.e. you must submit an email, which clearly isn't how Google wants these to run. It's also sometimes done as white on white text, text too small to read on a mobile device, or text that's buried in a a TOS intentionally. These aren't people legitimately attempting to offer a service, they are trying to dupe people.
- dddddaviddddd 7y agoReminds me of the I Am Rich app on iOS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
- _bxg1 7y agoWas just about to link this. Although the OP sounds much more insidious; I Am Rich was pretty up-front about everything.
- CaptainZapp 7y agoThere's a massive difference to the app you link to. The I Am Rich App was totally upfront about what you get. Namely: You pay 999$ for a red gem (as I recall) on your phone's display. There was nothing sneaky or underhanded about it. Essentially it was an app for people who wanted to prove that they have money to blow, but coughed from smoking cigars, lighted with 100$ bills. The idiocy of it was part of the concept, but the app was very upfront about what it does and what it costs. This is different in that you get a crappy, redundant app, which is "free", but sneaks a very expensive subscription model of which you are not aware, which is not really mentioned (or if, then in very dark patterns) and of which it's very hard to get out. The first is, arguably, an expensive piece of conceptual art (not on the phone, but on a meta level) the second model is outright fraud. What's discussed here is very different.
- epx 7y agoThere is a legitimate reason for that. If you unpublish an app, existing users can't download it. The workaround is to put a high price so nobody will buy new copies.
- lxgr 7y agoIs that still true, though? I think I've seen cases of apps being unpublished for new purchases (even free ones) but still available for downloads of existing users in both Google's and Apple's stores.
- epx 7y agoI had recently unpublished an app of mine expecting it would still be available for purchasers, didn't work. Had to resort to the outrageous price trick.
- DHPersonal 7y agoThat's strange–I wonder why unpublishing didn't work for you. I have seen several apps be taken off the store by various companies but remain on my list of Purchased apps on the App Store. I can still download the apps but not see the entry on the App Store when I tap on the app's name for details.
- _bxg1 7y agoThis isn't about the up-front cost, it's a workaround where users can be unexpectedly charged down the line. Please read the article first.
- woliveirajr 7y agoThe deal is that trial apps ate allowed to charge $ after the trial ends. To avoid it users have to uninstall and tell the developer. Since nobody reads and understand these fine prints, charging after the trial is ok, as it complies with Google rules. No laundry here...
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoThe fix could be pretty simple: Have the trial API built so that it locks out the app at the end of the trial and presents a pay-to-continue or uninstall option dialog the next time the user tries to use it.
- austinl 7y agoSimilar abuse occurs in Apple's ecosystem as well. It was really easy to subtly sign someone up for a $99/week subscription, but I'm not sure if this is still the case. A lot of these scam apps appeared regularly in the App Store's "Top Grossing" charts — easily millions of dollars every month were/are going to these kinds of apps. This is an interesting example of incentive alignment — in some sense, it's in Apple's best interest to let this abuse slide since they're also profiting off of it (though obviously that's not a long-term, deliberate strategy). This article covers it well: How to Make $80,000 Per Month on the Apple App Store (https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-on-the-apple-app-store-bdb943862e88 https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-o...)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- texuf 7y agoHow are these apps getting past app store review?
- Nextgrid 7y agoI wonder if the prices can be adjusted after the app is published. So the scammer publishes the app with a reasonable price, gets past review, then ups the price and profits.
- saagarjha 7y agoYes, you can apparently do this via App Store Connect.
- saagarjha 7y agoApp Store Review isn't very consistent or thorough.
- BLKNSLVR 7y agoOne of my kids managed to somehow bypass the restrictions I'd put in place on their device and signed up to a subscription that was a free three day trial, after which it would cost $79 per year. Luckily I also get emailed whenever there's activity on the account. Kid can't remember doing it, doesn't know how they did it, was upset at themselves. Device is locked down even harder now - as a result of looking up all the myriad settings to stop scams getting through and credit card details removed from the account. It should be hard to subscribe and easy to lock down. Not the opposite. The default should be "no spend". And this is from our heroes of privacy: Apple. (Not Apple bashing here; entire industry bashing. They're all grossly immoral no matter how legal it all is)
- Deimorz 7y agoThis is blogspam of https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2019/09/25/fleeceware-apps-overcharge-users-for-basic-app-functionality/ https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2019/09/25/fleeceware-apps-ove... The only thing this user does is submit articles from secalerts.co, and almost all of them are blogspam.
- dang 7y agoThanks, we've changed the URL to that from https://secalerts.co/article/android-apps-sold-for-hundreds-of-dollars-on-google-play-store/8690bdea https://secalerts.co/article/android-apps-sold-for-hundreds-....
- quickthrower2 7y agoWe can whack this mole, but really we just need a credit law (or convention from VISA/Mastercard) applied in as many countries as possible that says all charges on a credit card need to be pre-approved. So if you want to take $99/month from my CC I have to approve it, using a PIN, and say how many months I am happy for this to go on for. Basically what Paypal offers to terminate subscriptions should be at the card level for all transactions. This will stop the whole class of "forget to unsubscribe" type scams. In the meantime hopefully everyone hit will do a chargeback which would force Google to do something.
- bscphil 7y ago> We can whack this mole, but really we just need a credit law (or convention from VISA/Mastercard) applied in as many countries as possible that says all charges on a credit card need to be pre-approved. That would help, but it wouldn't completely stop the abuse. I recently decided to try out the VPS offerings at [a major cloud provider]. I paid for one month of a VPS with Paypal, quit using it before the end of the month, and didn't pay for another month. Unlike every respectable cloud provider I've ever used, they apparently wanted me to navigate their interface to figure out how to cancel the VPS and do that. Instead they kept it running for another two months (they say), and after one attempt to contact me by email (which I missed), turned my entire account over to collections, with all the mess that entails for me. So even preventing recurring charges won't necessarily help if the companies move to claiming that you never canceled your subscription and then trying to bill you for it later, or sending your account to collections.
- jchook 7y ago> they overcharge users for functionality that’s widely available in free or low-cost apps. The first thing I thought of here was YouTube charging me to play music with my phone locked in my pocket.
- jchook 7y agoAnother example that comes to mind.. headphone companies purposefully/artificially downgrading their sound quality on lower end models with cheap foam or something, while still using the same exact hardware as the higher end model.
- Konnstann 7y agoWhich headphone company does this? Genuinely interested, as I am very into portable audio, and haven't heard anything about it.
- SN76477 7y agoMy daughter often wants to download iphone games. A lot of these games will charge $4.99 per WEEK for access to keep playing without ads, etc. A lot of pc games cost much much less than that. And while I am talking about the cost of games https://itch.io/ https://itch.io/ is a fantastic place for free and cheap and pay what you want games.
- nyuszika7h 7y agoYes, this weekly subscription model for games even to just remove ads has become annoying. Thankfully you can just subscribe to AdGuard Pro for $3/year (yes, it's that cheap) and set it to use AdGuard DNS - this blocks ads in mobile games nicely.
- retSava 7y agoIn a way, good that they charge stupidly high amounts (the article has screenshots with claims of >100gbp/usd). That high, most people would make some noise to get it back. If it had been 10$ or similar, more people would either not notice it, or they would just jot it under the "well, shit, lesson learned" account.