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Apple’s tightly controlled App Store is teeming with scams

332 points by amaBasics 5y ago

TradingPlaces 5y ago
FWIW, Apple made $8.3 million with an M off those 18 apps (28.2% commission on average). They will make something like $350 billion with a B this year
rawtxapp 5y ago
The worst thing is, people have this belief that Apple is somehow protecting them, so they offload the critical thinking to Apple and lower their own guards. For example, a person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings [1]. edit: to be clear, I'm not blaming Apple for not stopping these scams, at their scale, it's just practically impossible to stop every scam, but by making their unrealistic promise that everything on the app store is safe, they are misleading people into this false sense of security. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/30/trezor-scam-bitcoin-1-million/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/30/trezor-...
- amaBasics 5y ago
  And as the article points out, Apple’s marketing coupled with fake ratings and reviews that plague the App Store can “create the perception for the public that they are safe downloading an app or buying a product and engaging in content that other people have found valuable” (emphasis mine)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I have sympathy for the person in this story, but I think shifting the blame to Apple in this case is ludicrous. I'm still somewhat shaking my head that someone went through all of the trouble of using a hardware wallet, and then entered his key words into the first app he downloaded. If anything I think this story is just a prime example of why irreversible crypto transactions are an absolute nightmare for the general public. With the banking system this person would likely have recourse, with crypto it's "Whoops, your wallet key words got stolen, sorry, there go your life savings."
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    They might have think twice if Apple didn't promise to make sure the app store was completely secure. A promise which they realistically can't keep at their scale no matter how hard they try. Also, this is just one example, the article itself has other ones.
    - defaultname 5y ago
      When has Apple made that promise? Where do they make that promise? No system is perfect, and when you get the realm of people submitting privileged information to third parties, all bets are always off. There is absolutely no way Apple could make guarantees about that. And they don't. Anywhere. And no, saying that they review apps isn't a promise that it is "completely secure". That is absurd. Trying for some security and confidence is a world removed from absolute security. The latter is effectively impossible. This thread is farce. Anything if it gives people an opportunity to ply their rhetoric. It is a reminder that while HN has some good discussions, it has a lot of people who just want to make stupid arguments based on lies. "But I thought you said TLS was completely secure? How could someripoffsite.com steal my cash?"
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        > When has Apple made that promise? Where do they make that promise? From apple.com/privacy: "Every one of the more than 1.8 million apps on the App Store is required to follow strict privacy guidelines and report how it uses your data. And every app is rigorously reviewed by a team of experts at Apple."
        defaultname 5y ago
        Which doesn't say or claim that it's "completely secure". The notion is preposterous if third parties are involved. Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Then again, so do people making disingenuous arguments online.
        5y ago
- osrec 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the Apple army will be ready to downvote you. In my experience, they will not hear anything negative about Apple, even if it's true. Disclaimer: I think Apple's products are beautiful, simple and well engineered, but they are able to feed some total BS to their fans, who just accept it at face value and regurgitate it everywhere, and that's annoying.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  Why not blame Trezor for allowing a fake app to steal money from his hardware wallet? Did he buy the wallet thinking it would make scams impossible?
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    Because Trezor doesn't control the iOS app store?
    - tedunangst 5y ago
      What purpose does a hardware wallet serve? What security does it offer?
      - oarsinsync 5y ago
        It provides an electronic and secure mechanism to store your private keys and sign transactions, while retaining confidence that your private keys will not be compromised while using the device. Think of it like a YubiKey. It’s not all that different. It also enables you to export those private keys so that you can keep a backup in the event of a hardware failure, because all hardware eventually fails. It doesn’t lock you into their platform / ecosystem exclusively. It doesn’t prevent you from using that backup elsewhere.
  - coding123 5y ago
    This is called blaming the victim. It takes a lot for someone that got scammed to come forward publicly with their story. And it helps others not get scammed too.
    - tedunangst 5y ago
      Trezor advertises itself as the most secure way to store bitcoins, yet he lost all his bitcoins. Not sure how you concluded I'm blaming the victim here.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  What unrealistic promise did Apple make? I am curious when they said the app store is "completely secure" because obviously nothing can be completely secure. I know they claim it is "the most secure" app store, which I am not sure what they use to back that up, it does seem to be one of the most secure platforms, it has my highest trust but I don't completely trust it. As others have said I do believe a curated app is is more secure than an un curated one or no app store, but nothing is perfect and there is a trade off for that curation and tight control.
- ______- 5y ago
  > A person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings I guess I'm victim-shaming here, but using mobile apps for large financial arrangements, no matter how trustworthy the app claims to be is a bad move. For this type of stuff you would use a clean computer with no known malware present, and use a privacy-aware browser like Firefox or Brave preferably with `HTTPS Everywhere` addon installed with the EASE feature turned on to avoid plaintext leaks / traffic going over HTTP.
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    People use their bank's apps, their investment institutions apps (Robinhood, Fidelity, etc) and a lot of other financial apps all the time.
    - dumbfounder 5y ago
      I can’t send a lot of money around with any of my bank apps. It has relatively low limits.
      - ______- 5y ago
        Yes if you are dealing in small amounts that you wouldn't mind losing to fraudulent apps, then do it, but read my previous comment about locked down machines if dealing with very large transactions.
      - throwaway3699 5y ago
        I'm not sure that trend holds. Most banking apps let you send tens of thousands in one go. They're very aggressive with the "are you sure?" question in my experience though.
        MomoXenosaga 5y ago
        Yes mine let's me put in a limit. I have set it to a low €500 since I rarely do large purchases in webshops. At the end of the day people are responsible for not doing business with shady stores or people. But the idea that a single QR code can empty my entire account is sobering...
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  > For example, a person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings [1]. There's a lot more wrong in this scenario than just the app store. If someone is going to be so amazingly careless with half a million dollars...
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    If someone technical enough to have a hardware wallet and "smart" enough to have amassed half a million dollars falls for this scam, I think it tells you more about how much (misplaced) trust they put in Apple rather than how careless they were, but that's just my opinion.
    - richardwhiuk 5y ago
      The real issue is Bitcoin here.
      - bradleykingz 5y ago
        I'm surprised too... He had his life savings in Bitcoin?
        rawtxapp 5y ago
        A good friend of mine has ~98% of his savings in BTC since 2015 and know quite a bit of other people with high % of their savings in it. For those that can ignore the short term volatility, who have good incomes as safety nets (say FAANG jobs) to weather any storms, those who don't trust their governments and who are relatively young to recover any large losses, it can be an acceptable tradeoff (needless to say, a very profitable one as well).
      - paulpauper 5y ago
        Bitcoin makes scamming so much more lucrative . So many pple have been scammed such as fake apps and giveaway scams.
- amelius 5y ago
  The problem is that Apple loves to claim that they need full control over their platform to keep their platform safe.
  - slver 5y ago
    They do need full control to keep their platform safe. Are they managing to keep it safe is independent of that claim and we can ask why are those getting through.
  - plerpin 5y ago
    Their PR lets them have it both ways.
    - 411111111111111 5y ago
      Their users too, as shown in every other comment here.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        So, enlighten me, how does another app store increase safety if Apple is writing the APIs used by the other app stores? clearly it doesn’t, it just provides options for more of the same. so then I wonder what the point to all of this is, and the only idea that comes to mind is a bunch of tech savvy android users really want to use iphone but can’t/won’t until there’s additional gatekeepers, err i mean app stores.
        411111111111111 5y ago
        We're just rolling our eyes that people actually believe that the full control apple wants over their products has anything to do with security. It's the most profitable course of action, that's all there is to it. But to address your question: if apple allowed other stores, they could be significantly more picky about what's allowed on their store. This would consequently increase the security for people only using the official store. This is obviously a no-go however, as that would be less profitable then the current situation.
- Black101 5y ago
  The problem is that Apple is lying about what they are doing... and therefor, they should probably be targeted by dozens of class action lawsuits.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > I'm not blaming Apple for not stopping these scams Why not? You should blame them. They have positioned themselves as the gatekeepers. Why? To extract profit from application developers. However, such a powerful position also comes with expectations and responsibilities. They should absolutely not be allowed to get away with gross negligence. We absolutely must blame them every single time they fail to keep malicious software out. They are responsible for that man's losses and should fully indemnify him. Had they not approved that software, it would not have happened. Nobody cares about their "scale" or how "difficult" it is for them to determine what is and isn't malicious. They have assumed that responsibility by gatekeeping their devices and therefore any failures are directly attributable to them.
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    I agree, I think they should help him, but I also think it would open a whole can of worms. The fact is, no matter how much time/energy/effort they spend, they will never eliminate all scams, scams would just become more and more sophisticated. This doesn't mean, they should just give up, but having been through the review process, they are already doing quite a bit. So that would mean, they will make it much harder for apps to get approved in the store (and it's already a very painful process), so you'd only end up with apps from large developers which is not ideal. We are seeing a similar dynamic with Youtube which has become rather "ban-happy" as in they don't want to take risks, so would rather ban content than try to reduce false positives, because at a certain scale, you just can't identify content with good precision/recall.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > I also think it would open a whole can of worms Absolutely. Apple should be afraid of holding the gatekeeper position. Anyone should. When people can install and use whatever they want, safety becomes their responsibility. They should open up their platform and let people do their own due dilligence. If they assume that responsibility and then neglect it, they absolutely can and should be blamed for any problems.
      - 5y ago
- yawaworht1978 5y ago
  This makes me wonder, can such thieves easily convert the stolen Bitcoin or are these blacklisted everywhere?
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    The whole idea behind crypto currencies is that there is no central authority behind it. And so there is no blacklist / whitelist because you need such an authority, trusted by everyone, to create such a list. All cryptocurrency transfers (between digital wallets) are recorded in a public ledger (the blockchain). Anybody can read it. But only those with the correct encryption keys to a wallet can write to it (add a record). Once someone steals the encryption key of your wallet A, it can be used to access your wallet and add a record to the public ledger that all the cryptocurrency of wallet A has been transferred to wallet B. This record cannot be changed by anyone. But since every transaction on the ledger is a public record that anyone can read, one can theoretically track where the cryptocurrency goes from one wallet to another. This can be used to catch a thief by the police. Anyone can create a digital wallet anonymously, but to convert it into real currency you need to provide your real life identity and bank account to a crypto-exchange. This is the point where someone becomes exposed and loses their anonymity, and hence can be identified by the law.
- tobr 5y ago
  ”At their scale” excuses are the worst. It’s one thing that scale will cause a tiny percentage to create a large number of cases. But if it makes the percentage go up, it’s a sign you need to scale back down until you figure out how not to get people hurt. No one forced you to be humongous scale.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  2% is pretty low compared to random websites (it’s your birthday! Enter your info in this link so we can send you a gift!)
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Most people don't browse random websites
    - gentleman11 5y ago
      Only because those sites never appear in google search. So google search is the App Store of the internet?
joezydeco 5y ago
I'm boggled that Apple lets apps charge a weekly amount for features that have no appearance of new content each week, like a newspaper or magazine would. This seems like the simplest thing to fix right away.
- echelon 5y ago
  I'm boggled that the US government lets Apple rake in 30% for commerce on the app store, despite it being only one of two games in town for commerce. It'd be like only having two options for cars (Ford and Tesla), and forcing restaurants, stores, etc. to pay 30% of their gross revenue to Tesla for their having brought you. It's truly bizarro world. Make no pretense. This isn't about protecting consumers, this is about Apple's control. They want to install toll booths onto every road to reaching Americans, and they're defending it like Omaha beach. No browsers, no runtimes, no relationship with your customers. (I swear to god if I hear the "but Nintendo" argument again... These aren't toys. Apple captured 50% of ingress to US customers and their commerce, and they tightly control and tax it. Illegal af.)
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    Don't derail. There are other threads about Apple's store and their vig.
    - echelon 5y ago
      Apple is an anticompetitive steam roller and they deserve every measure of criticism they receive. Don't ask for censorship to protect a brand you value. Apple is not beyond reproach.
      - joezydeco 5y ago
        All I said was to take the 'Apple Monopoly' discussion to the 'Apple Monopoly' threads, of which there are plenty. This discussion can be about the shitty App Store approval process and the shitty App Store developers without getting into the financials.
granzymes 5y ago
Would the number of scams in the top 1000 be higher than 2% if the App Store was not tightly controlled? It doesn't follow that, since some bad things have gotten past the gatekeeper, we should get rid of the gatekeeper.
- Toutouxc 5y ago
  The number of scams and fakes on the Google Play store is off the charts.
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    Do you have any numbers to back up that claim?
    - Toutouxc 5y ago
      Nope, I don't even think such number exists, it's just my impression of the amount of "why the fuck would anyone even publish this" apps out there.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- amaBasics 5y ago
  That’s unclear. A couple of things to consider, both of which are helping scammers currently: - A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. - The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable. I can see how a more trustworthy ratings system and a more honest marketing of the App Store for what it really is, could lead to fewer scams, even if Apple doesn’t control the App Review process so tightly - or doesn’t control it all.
  - granzymes 5y ago
    > A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. This is the "a lot of scammers are better than a few sophisticated scammers" argument, which I disagree with. Users themselves have varying levels of sophistication (unsophisticated scams work just fine on some people), and there are other mechanisms like chargebacks which can unwind damage after the fact. > The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable. I have no insight into how well Apple is doing combating fake reviews, but no anti-abuse system is perfect. There is the same question here: would things be worse if Apple didn't police reviews at all. The App Store is broken but it is the least broken of the app stores.
Traster 5y ago
Apple's problem with claiming their 30% tax is to do with maintaining quality of the appstore is how comically small amounts of money they spend policing the appstore. At some point one of these lawsuits is going to have to establish how much they really spend, I would be amazed if they were spending 0.001% of revenue on it.
tlogan 5y ago
I got scammed too. I got an app for $14/week for some LG / Samsung screen sharing. We were in hotel and I wanted to stream something to TV in the hotel room so I quickly downloaded it. Wine did not help :( The app was charging me for one month. But then it disappeared from the store. One problem is this weekly schedule: people do not check cc statements on weekly schedule. Also they should sent an iMessage a couple of days before the change.
- rchaud 5y ago
  > also they should sent an iMessage a couple of days before the change. But then users might disable the auto-renew, and Apple wouldn't get their cut.
  - ryanmcdonough 5y ago
    Apple auto tell you if you delete an app with a subscription that there’s a subscription on this and allows you to end it right there.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  You're forgetting that Apple makes money every time you spend it. They aren't going to stop serving you drinks inside their casino, and they're certainly not going to warn you before you fleece their pockets again.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  I get an email receipt each time I get charged by an app, and I believe I even get a “trial expiring soon” email before something starts charging me. The few times I’ve accidentally left a subscription running I’ve been able to go to reportaproblem.apple.com and ask for a refund and each time it’s worked without any drama.
dkarras 5y ago
The article's premise does not make sense. This stuff happens despite the tight control, not because of it. If it was uncurated, it would be a cesspool like the Google play store (or ...shudder... the "competing" stores). Having a paid app that reads QR codes is not necessarily a scam. The article admits that 2/3 of the apps they reported were taken down. The article claims: "If consumers were to have access to alternative app stores or other methods of distributing software, Apple would be a lot more likely to take this problem more seriously" Yet then says: "Apple isn’t the only company that struggles with this issue: They’re also on Google’s Play Store, which is available on its Android mobile operating system. But unlike Apple, Google doesn’t claim that its Play Store is curated." ...so lack of competing stores or presence of (imperfect) curation is not the cause, because Google did not even begin to attempt to solve this problem. Play store apps, unless proven otherwise, are generally malware you carry with yourself every day, with potential access to everything in your device because the OS is nowhere near locked down compared to Apple counterpart. Hell, most Android devices ship with undeletable malware from vendors etc. Apple model is broken, but it is the least broken out there. Instead of admitting that, article tries to be a hit piece trying to make the Apple model look worse for the ongoing trial.
- echelon 5y ago
  Apple's model is the most broken out there. They've distorted our free market into "Apple's market". They tax ingress to 50% of Americans and don't let you establish a relationship with your customers. Beyond that, they make you dance through hoops to build and deploy software. It's a travesty that they won. If this continues, businesses will be paying Apple for customers brought to them by Apple iCar.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > Apple model is broken, but it is the least broken out there. This would almost be true if users weren't forced to use the App Store to install native apps in the first place. If I had a choice to use a store like F-Droid on my iPhone, I wouldn't be complaining. However, being forced to use a broken system is still a complaint, even if it's marginally more secure than it's competitors.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
perfectstorm 5y ago
A former colleague of mine put out an iPhone battery extender app as a joke and surprisingly people paid for the app and wrote reviews claiming that this app extended their battery life when the app did nothing other than show couple of graphics. I was amused at the stupidity of the whole thing and I believe he pulled down the app after sometime but the App Store review process is a joke.
simonw 5y ago
I'm quoted in this! Original Hacker News comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26796662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26796662 - then I tweeted about it and ended up talking to the reporter.
amaBasics 5y ago
Apple themselves seem to be intentionally breaking the App Store at times. From the article: > Apple used to have a button [1], just under the ratings and reviews section in the App Store, that said “report a problem,” which allowed users to report inappropriate apps. Based on discussions among Apple customers on Apple’s own website [2], the feature was removed some time around 2016. Why would they remove the ability for people to easily report apps? 1: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/117773.image0.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.dummies.com/consumer-electronics/smartphones/iphone/how-to-report-an-app-problem-from-your-iphone/&tbnid=nYTbylBB3V7KUM&vet=1&docid=DgeFbTcYRiX7VM&w=267&h=400&hl=en-us&source=sh/x/im https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.dummies.com... 2: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6999097#:~:text=Apple%20has%20removed%20the%20feature,option%20in%20iTunes%20for%20Windows.&text=Apple%20has%20removed%20the%20feature%20or%20ability%20to%20report%20bad%20apps.,-All%20one%20can https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6999097#:~:text=Apple%2...
- granzymes 5y ago
  >Why would they remove the ability for people to easily report apps? Presumably for a reason. I don't work at Apple, so to spitball some possibilities: * The "report a problem" button was being misused and had worse signal than other metrics Apple added. * Legal or Public Relations pressed to remove the button because only a portion of reports were actioned (possibly because of the above point) and it was causing legal/reputational damage.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Even in this most generous possible explanation, Apple removed a quality-control check and didn't replace it with anything.
    - granzymes 5y ago
      My point is that you don't know that they didn't replace it with anything.
      - 5y ago
rchaud 5y ago
> Simon Willison, a software engineer and a former iOS developer [...] owns a Samsung television and went to the App Store on his phone to install the accompanying Samsung remote control app called “SmartThings.” An app called “Smart Things” popped up, claiming to be a remote for Samsung televisions. Willison paid $19 for the app. It turns out the app was pretending to the be the genuine Samsung product. His mistake, he says, was an “assumption that the App Store review process was good,” he said. “I held Apple in higher regard than I did Samsung.” A iOS developer pays $19 for a remote control app on the App Store and defaults to blaming Samsung. Steve Jobs should get a posthumous award for how well his reality distortion field has held up after his death.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  Huh? He's clearly blaming Apple for violating his trust. He never trusted Samsung.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Clearly he did, because he spent several hundred dollars buying their smart TV.
    - sixstringtheory 5y ago
      > His mistake, he says, was an “assumption that the App Store review process was good He said it was a mistake to think the app store review process was good. How is that blaming Samsung?
    - simonw 5y ago
      I inherited the TV when I moved into a new house.
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  I've met quite a number of developers that somehow barely have the skills of my grandma using a PC outside of their daily development tasks. Ive seen multiple help desk tickets back in my help desk days where developers got someone to email saying their PC was broken when it was just turned off. My point being a developer does not necessarily make this person somehow less susceptible to app store scams.
williesleg 5y ago
The internet is one of the greatest scams of our time. By the time you realize it, it's too late.
bronzeage 5y ago
To realign Apple's incentives with the consumers again, Apple should be forced to return at least their 30% commission share whenever an App was deemed fraudulent.
haspoken 5y ago
http://archive.is/msY5N http://archive.is/msY5N
baking 5y ago
Does anyone else find it ironic that this is in the Washington Post?
jollybean 5y ago
If you bought a product from Walmart that was not only unsafe, but actively trying to scam you - people would sue Walmart. The claim that 'every app is reviewed for security' should be a giant liability problem. The store model is a huge winfall of profits precisely because they don't have to do any of this. Realistically, if we use brick-and-mortar as a reference ... it might very well be that if you want to do something 'commercial' on a platform, literally using Apple's payment infrastructure, there's probably going to actually have to be more rigorous insight. This will cost Apple a lot, and probably cost sellers a lot as well, I can see it costing $X dollars for the review process then $Y for every upgrade, possibly Z days delay in payments and possibly esceleating % whitheld given market size, until AAA+ confidence rating. All of the ugly things we see in regular finance exist basically for this reason (i.e. VISA chargebacks, bank freezes, paypal holds) etc. etc.. A lot of profits are raised by ignoring these realities. Same goes for Amazon.
jjcm 5y ago
In my eyes the trouble with the App Store is discovery is purely via curated lists and search. The problem with surfacing via each of these two methods is the user has to put trust into the system that what is being displayed is reputable and trustworthy. Apple unfortunately has shown that they prioritize monetary return over best-fit for content, which leads to scams like this. Let’s deep dive into the issues with the two formats they display info in. Curated-list discovery (versus algorithmic discovery such as “top of the week”) tell the user that these apps have been hand selected by Apple for being quality apps. In general though it turns out that these lists are more often lists of apps that make Apple significant amounts of money, changing what Apple is incentivized to display. Take for example the only way they allow discovery of highly rated apps - the “Everyone’s Favorites (highly rated apps)” list: https://i.imgur.com/7D2hvwO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7D2hvwO.jpg. The top spot is held by Tinder, which currently has a 3.8/5 rating. This list very clearly isn’t a list of highly rated apps, only highly used / large money makers for Apple. We see clearly that Apple prioritizes monetary return over accurate results. Search is another example of this. Most search algorithms are black boxes - inputs go in, results come out that we expect to be able to trust. Searching for “Samsung” should bring up apps from Samsung, but instead they return mostly free third party apps with IAP up sells rather than the official apps. Overall the App Store is designed for monetary return, not safety or user trust. Until Apple decides that the long term image / trustworthiness of the App Store is more important than short term gain, I don’t see these issues changing.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
iOS apps trying to push subscriptions which is heaven for scams and fraud.
egocentric 5y ago
Some relevant Apple marketing statements [1]: "The apps you love. From a place you can trust." "For over a decade, the App Store has proved to be a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps." "Every day, moderators review worldwide App Store charts for quality and accuracy.” "Dedicated to trust and safety.” "Apps must adhere to our guidelines.” "From more videos to rankings and reviews, there are loads of ways to help you pick the app that’s right for you.” "ensuring that the apps we offer are held to the highest standards for privacy, security, and content. Because we offer nearly two million apps — and we want you to feel good about using every single one of them." "When you download an app, it should work as promised. Which is why human App Reviewers ensure that the apps on the App Store adhere to our strict app review standards. Our App Store Review Guidelines require apps to be safe, provide a good user experience, comply with our privacy rules, secure devices from malware and threats, and use approved business models." 1: https://www.apple.com/app-store https://www.apple.com/app-store
- Black101 5y ago
  So does that mean that you can sue Apple if an app fails at any of these? Of course not, because lying for Apple is common business practice nowadays.
  - georgyo 5y ago
    "no reasonable person would possibly believe these statements as true." That statement from the courts has allowed all sorts of lying in marketing.
    - Black101 5y ago
      Marketing is about to become a synonym to lying in the legal sense... therefore lying is ok.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > because lying for Apple is common business practice nowadays. To be scrupulouly fair, the "for Apple" is 100% redundant.
efitz 5y ago
It sounds to me as if Apple is doing a relatively good job. The article didn’t give total volume numbers, but 48M USD seems like a drop in the bucket. Only 2% of top 1000 apps? I’d love to see the numbers but I doubt the Play store is even in that ballpark. Like everyone, I would love to see a world where no one gets scammed. Unfortunately there are humans involved so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
jdminhbg 5y ago
There are lots of articles like this that report breathlessly on the numerator but don’t make any kind of effort to find out what the denominator is.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
"[N]early two million apps" and almost all of them are total junk because no one adheres to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines[1]. It's a sea of garbage. Real quality operation you run, Schiller. Every time I browse the App Store I feel like I'm walking through a bazaar. No coherency. No taste. Nordstrom my behind. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
personjerry 5y ago
So there's this "Wrong Button!"[0] in the app store that just plays a "Wrong" sound clip when you click it. And also it has 5 different ads on the screen, an unskippable ad on opening the app that forces open Safari to view another ad, and a "Share" function presumably so they can bombard your friends with ads too. Now I thought this was crappy, and I wanted the "Wrong" sound clip as said by Trump, so last week for fun I made a Wrong button that has no ads, plays the actual "Wrong" clip from Trump, and costs $1 as a one-time payment. I got rejected, because the functionality was too minimal, and they said that I should add features. Hmm. It feels like their approval process is pretty inconsistent, kinda arbitrary. I kinda want to write back to them to figure out what exactly the existing "Wrong Button!" app has that I'm missing, like is ads mandatory? But also I feel like it's not worth my time. Frustrating. [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrong-button/id368793118 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrong-button/id368793118
- swiley 5y ago
  That sounds like it really should be a web page.
  - personjerry 5y ago
    I see what you're getting at. For me, this was a small toy, and websites have maintenance costs while this has none, and that's the tradeoff I prefer at the moment.
  - meowster 5y ago
    Web pages require an Internet connection to access, an app doesn't.
    - kevincox 5y ago
      This isn't true. Websites can cache themselves for offline use.
dang 5y ago
Related previous threads: Apple store fake app stole man's life savings in Bitcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956568 - April 2021 (89 comments) Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching the most egregious scams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26888190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26888190 - April 2021 (6 comments) $5M/year VPN scam on the AppStore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26807566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26807566 - April 2021 (6 comments) A top-grossing scam on the App Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228 - April 2021 (269 comments) iOS developer who drew attention to App Store scams is now suing Apple - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504158 - March 2021 (45 comments) Apple cracks down on ‘irrationally high prices’ as App Store scams are exposed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26198098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26198098 - Feb 2021 (5 comments) Apple’s App Store is hosting multi-million dollar scams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069660 - Feb 2021 (8 comments) Developer exposes multiple million-dollar scam apps on the App Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26067364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26067364 - Feb 2021 (8 comments) How to spot a $5M/year scam on the App Store, in 5 minutes flat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26054673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26054673 - Feb 2021 (13 comments) Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 - Feb 2021 (320 comments) Apple Pulling High-Grossing Scammy Offer Subscription Apps Off the App Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18260514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18260514 - Oct 2018 (73 comments) How to scam and get 67k all 5 Star reviews on the app store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034764 - Dec 2017 (36 comments) $80k/month App Store Scam - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156 - June 2017 (195 comments) Don’t Be Fooled: The Mac App Store Is Full of Scams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052127 - Nov 2016 (16 comments)
travisgriggs 5y ago
What's so tightly controlled about Apple's App Store? Maybe the headline is meant to be tongue in cheek contradictory, but if it's teeming with scams, isn't that saying it's not so tightly controlled?
userbinator 5y ago
Meanwhile, we hear the honest developers routinely get screwed over... It reminds me of the "pirates vs DRM" thing.
Keyframe 5y ago
If you've spent anywhere near 10 minutes on the app store, you can tell that outside of top charting apps, app store is filled with shit just as playstore is. From overall nonfunctional quickly made pos to blatant copyright infringement evil shit. Fine, I get it it's hard to curate, but let's not pretend then it actually is curated overall. So, Apple, either do what Nintendo did when they started with NES and come hard on QA or stop pretending.
arielm 5y ago
Like many comments are saying, policing these even more is not an easy challenge, so to say “don’t trust Apple” isn’t really the right attitude IMO. But… what I think would be nice to see from Apple is better visibility into those ratings and reviews so users have more to go on than a single number. Will that alone prevent these from happening? probably not, but this isn’t a fight that can be won with a single battle/weapon.
xtat 5y ago
The illusion of security is worse than no security, etc
makecheck 5y ago
I remember how one person spent just a little time and uncovered one scam after another. It wasn’t even necessary to dig deep in every case (e.g. sometimes it was just “look at top grossing charts”). That is why almost any excuse Apple gives is just not good enough: clearly if Apple had even one person working on this full-time, they should have caught this. Who cares about fancy analysis tools or machine learning until they can catch the big, obvious stuff? We also know from trial documents that they decided ~500ish people was enough to review the millions of apps and app revisions in existence. I don’t even have to do the math and I know that is nowhere near sufficient. Apple clearly is either clueless about this, or does not care, and either one of those is a huge problem. It also means that almost everything they claim about the security of the App Store itself is not true (rather, a substantial portion of the security comes from the OS and device, not necessarily the review).

332 points by amaBasics 5y ago

FWIW, Apple made $8.3 million with an M off those 18 apps (28.2% commission on average). They will make something like $350 billion with a B this year

rawtxapp 5y ago

The worst thing is, people have this belief that Apple is somehow protecting them, so they offload the critical thinking to Apple and lower their own guards. For example, a person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings [1]. edit: to be clear, I'm not blaming Apple for not stopping these scams, at their scale, it's just practically impossible to stop every scam, but by making their unrealistic promise that everything on the app store is safe, they are misleading people into this false sense of security. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/30/trezor-scam-bitcoin-1-million/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/30/trezor-...

amaBasics 5y ago
And as the article points out, Apple’s marketing coupled with fake ratings and reviews that plague the App Store can “create the perception for the public that they are safe downloading an app or buying a product and engaging in content that other people have found valuable” (emphasis mine)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I have sympathy for the person in this story, but I think shifting the blame to Apple in this case is ludicrous. I'm still somewhat shaking my head that someone went through all of the trouble of using a hardware wallet, and then entered his key words into the first app he downloaded. If anything I think this story is just a prime example of why irreversible crypto transactions are an absolute nightmare for the general public. With the banking system this person would likely have recourse, with crypto it's "Whoops, your wallet key words got stolen, sorry, there go your life savings."
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  They might have think twice if Apple didn't promise to make sure the app store was completely secure. A promise which they realistically can't keep at their scale no matter how hard they try. Also, this is just one example, the article itself has other ones.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    When has Apple made that promise? Where do they make that promise? No system is perfect, and when you get the realm of people submitting privileged information to third parties, all bets are always off. There is absolutely no way Apple could make guarantees about that. And they don't. Anywhere. And no, saying that they review apps isn't a promise that it is "completely secure". That is absurd. Trying for some security and confidence is a world removed from absolute security. The latter is effectively impossible. This thread is farce. Anything if it gives people an opportunity to ply their rhetoric. It is a reminder that while HN has some good discussions, it has a lot of people who just want to make stupid arguments based on lies. "But I thought you said TLS was completely secure? How could someripoffsite.com steal my cash?"
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      > When has Apple made that promise? Where do they make that promise? From apple.com/privacy: "Every one of the more than 1.8 million apps on the App Store is required to follow strict privacy guidelines and report how it uses your data. And every app is rigorously reviewed by a team of experts at Apple."
      - defaultname 5y ago
        Which doesn't say or claim that it's "completely secure". The notion is preposterous if third parties are involved. Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Then again, so do people making disingenuous arguments online.
        5y ago
osrec 5y ago
Unfortunately, the Apple army will be ready to downvote you. In my experience, they will not hear anything negative about Apple, even if it's true. Disclaimer: I think Apple's products are beautiful, simple and well engineered, but they are able to feed some total BS to their fans, who just accept it at face value and regurgitate it everywhere, and that's annoying.
tedunangst 5y ago
Why not blame Trezor for allowing a fake app to steal money from his hardware wallet? Did he buy the wallet thinking it would make scams impossible?
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  Because Trezor doesn't control the iOS app store?
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    What purpose does a hardware wallet serve? What security does it offer?
    - oarsinsync 5y ago
      It provides an electronic and secure mechanism to store your private keys and sign transactions, while retaining confidence that your private keys will not be compromised while using the device. Think of it like a YubiKey. It’s not all that different. It also enables you to export those private keys so that you can keep a backup in the event of a hardware failure, because all hardware eventually fails. It doesn’t lock you into their platform / ecosystem exclusively. It doesn’t prevent you from using that backup elsewhere.
- coding123 5y ago
  This is called blaming the victim. It takes a lot for someone that got scammed to come forward publicly with their story. And it helps others not get scammed too.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    Trezor advertises itself as the most secure way to store bitcoins, yet he lost all his bitcoins. Not sure how you concluded I'm blaming the victim here.
SigmundA 5y ago
What unrealistic promise did Apple make? I am curious when they said the app store is "completely secure" because obviously nothing can be completely secure. I know they claim it is "the most secure" app store, which I am not sure what they use to back that up, it does seem to be one of the most secure platforms, it has my highest trust but I don't completely trust it. As others have said I do believe a curated app is is more secure than an un curated one or no app store, but nothing is perfect and there is a trade off for that curation and tight control.
______- 5y ago
> A person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings I guess I'm victim-shaming here, but using mobile apps for large financial arrangements, no matter how trustworthy the app claims to be is a bad move. For this type of stuff you would use a clean computer with no known malware present, and use a privacy-aware browser like Firefox or Brave preferably with `HTTPS Everywhere` addon installed with the EASE feature turned on to avoid plaintext leaks / traffic going over HTTP.
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  People use their bank's apps, their investment institutions apps (Robinhood, Fidelity, etc) and a lot of other financial apps all the time.
  - dumbfounder 5y ago
    I can’t send a lot of money around with any of my bank apps. It has relatively low limits.
    - ______- 5y ago
      Yes if you are dealing in small amounts that you wouldn't mind losing to fraudulent apps, then do it, but read my previous comment about locked down machines if dealing with very large transactions.
    - throwaway3699 5y ago
      I'm not sure that trend holds. Most banking apps let you send tens of thousands in one go. They're very aggressive with the "are you sure?" question in my experience though.
      - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
        Yes mine let's me put in a limit. I have set it to a low €500 since I rarely do large purchases in webshops. At the end of the day people are responsible for not doing business with shady stores or people. But the idea that a single QR code can empty my entire account is sobering...
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> For example, a person thought he was getting a legitimate Bitcoin wallet app, but turns out it was a fake and he lost his life savings [1]. There's a lot more wrong in this scenario than just the app store. If someone is going to be so amazingly careless with half a million dollars...
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  If someone technical enough to have a hardware wallet and "smart" enough to have amassed half a million dollars falls for this scam, I think it tells you more about how much (misplaced) trust they put in Apple rather than how careless they were, but that's just my opinion.
  - richardwhiuk 5y ago
    The real issue is Bitcoin here.
    - bradleykingz 5y ago
      I'm surprised too... He had his life savings in Bitcoin?
      - rawtxapp 5y ago
        A good friend of mine has ~98% of his savings in BTC since 2015 and know quite a bit of other people with high % of their savings in it. For those that can ignore the short term volatility, who have good incomes as safety nets (say FAANG jobs) to weather any storms, those who don't trust their governments and who are relatively young to recover any large losses, it can be an acceptable tradeoff (needless to say, a very profitable one as well).
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      Bitcoin makes scamming so much more lucrative . So many pple have been scammed such as fake apps and giveaway scams.
amelius 5y ago
The problem is that Apple loves to claim that they need full control over their platform to keep their platform safe.
- slver 5y ago
  They do need full control to keep their platform safe. Are they managing to keep it safe is independent of that claim and we can ask why are those getting through.
- plerpin 5y ago
  Their PR lets them have it both ways.
  - 411111111111111 5y ago
    Their users too, as shown in every other comment here.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      So, enlighten me, how does another app store increase safety if Apple is writing the APIs used by the other app stores? clearly it doesn’t, it just provides options for more of the same. so then I wonder what the point to all of this is, and the only idea that comes to mind is a bunch of tech savvy android users really want to use iphone but can’t/won’t until there’s additional gatekeepers, err i mean app stores.
      - 411111111111111 5y ago
        We're just rolling our eyes that people actually believe that the full control apple wants over their products has anything to do with security. It's the most profitable course of action, that's all there is to it. But to address your question: if apple allowed other stores, they could be significantly more picky about what's allowed on their store. This would consequently increase the security for people only using the official store. This is obviously a no-go however, as that would be less profitable then the current situation.
Black101 5y ago
The problem is that Apple is lying about what they are doing... and therefor, they should probably be targeted by dozens of class action lawsuits.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> I'm not blaming Apple for not stopping these scams Why not? You should blame them. They have positioned themselves as the gatekeepers. Why? To extract profit from application developers. However, such a powerful position also comes with expectations and responsibilities. They should absolutely not be allowed to get away with gross negligence. We absolutely must blame them every single time they fail to keep malicious software out. They are responsible for that man's losses and should fully indemnify him. Had they not approved that software, it would not have happened. Nobody cares about their "scale" or how "difficult" it is for them to determine what is and isn't malicious. They have assumed that responsibility by gatekeeping their devices and therefore any failures are directly attributable to them.
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  I agree, I think they should help him, but I also think it would open a whole can of worms. The fact is, no matter how much time/energy/effort they spend, they will never eliminate all scams, scams would just become more and more sophisticated. This doesn't mean, they should just give up, but having been through the review process, they are already doing quite a bit. So that would mean, they will make it much harder for apps to get approved in the store (and it's already a very painful process), so you'd only end up with apps from large developers which is not ideal. We are seeing a similar dynamic with Youtube which has become rather "ban-happy" as in they don't want to take risks, so would rather ban content than try to reduce false positives, because at a certain scale, you just can't identify content with good precision/recall.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > I also think it would open a whole can of worms Absolutely. Apple should be afraid of holding the gatekeeper position. Anyone should. When people can install and use whatever they want, safety becomes their responsibility. They should open up their platform and let people do their own due dilligence. If they assume that responsibility and then neglect it, they absolutely can and should be blamed for any problems.
    - 5y ago
yawaworht1978 5y ago
This makes me wonder, can such thieves easily convert the stolen Bitcoin or are these blacklisted everywhere?
- webmobdev 5y ago
  The whole idea behind crypto currencies is that there is no central authority behind it. And so there is no blacklist / whitelist because you need such an authority, trusted by everyone, to create such a list. All cryptocurrency transfers (between digital wallets) are recorded in a public ledger (the blockchain). Anybody can read it. But only those with the correct encryption keys to a wallet can write to it (add a record). Once someone steals the encryption key of your wallet A, it can be used to access your wallet and add a record to the public ledger that all the cryptocurrency of wallet A has been transferred to wallet B. This record cannot be changed by anyone. But since every transaction on the ledger is a public record that anyone can read, one can theoretically track where the cryptocurrency goes from one wallet to another. This can be used to catch a thief by the police. Anyone can create a digital wallet anonymously, but to convert it into real currency you need to provide your real life identity and bank account to a crypto-exchange. This is the point where someone becomes exposed and loses their anonymity, and hence can be identified by the law.
tobr 5y ago
”At their scale” excuses are the worst. It’s one thing that scale will cause a tiny percentage to create a large number of cases. But if it makes the percentage go up, it’s a sign you need to scale back down until you figure out how not to get people hurt. No one forced you to be humongous scale.
gentleman11 5y ago
2% is pretty low compared to random websites (it’s your birthday! Enter your info in this link so we can send you a gift!)
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Most people don't browse random websites
  - gentleman11 5y ago
    Only because those sites never appear in google search. So google search is the App Store of the internet?

joezydeco 5y ago

I'm boggled that Apple lets apps charge a weekly amount for features that have no appearance of new content each week, like a newspaper or magazine would. This seems like the simplest thing to fix right away.

echelon 5y ago
I'm boggled that the US government lets Apple rake in 30% for commerce on the app store, despite it being only one of two games in town for commerce. It'd be like only having two options for cars (Ford and Tesla), and forcing restaurants, stores, etc. to pay 30% of their gross revenue to Tesla for their having brought you. It's truly bizarro world. Make no pretense. This isn't about protecting consumers, this is about Apple's control. They want to install toll booths onto every road to reaching Americans, and they're defending it like Omaha beach. No browsers, no runtimes, no relationship with your customers. (I swear to god if I hear the "but Nintendo" argument again... These aren't toys. Apple captured 50% of ingress to US customers and their commerce, and they tightly control and tax it. Illegal af.)
- joezydeco 5y ago
  Don't derail. There are other threads about Apple's store and their vig.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Apple is an anticompetitive steam roller and they deserve every measure of criticism they receive. Don't ask for censorship to protect a brand you value. Apple is not beyond reproach.
    - joezydeco 5y ago
      All I said was to take the 'Apple Monopoly' discussion to the 'Apple Monopoly' threads, of which there are plenty. This discussion can be about the shitty App Store approval process and the shitty App Store developers without getting into the financials.

granzymes 5y ago

Would the number of scams in the top 1000 be higher than 2% if the App Store was not tightly controlled? It doesn't follow that, since some bad things have gotten past the gatekeeper, we should get rid of the gatekeeper.

Toutouxc 5y ago
The number of scams and fakes on the Google Play store is off the charts.
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  Do you have any numbers to back up that claim?
  - Toutouxc 5y ago
    Nope, I don't even think such number exists, it's just my impression of the amount of "why the fuck would anyone even publish this" apps out there.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
amaBasics 5y ago
That’s unclear. A couple of things to consider, both of which are helping scammers currently: - A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. - The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable. I can see how a more trustworthy ratings system and a more honest marketing of the App Store for what it really is, could lead to fewer scams, even if Apple doesn’t control the App Review process so tightly - or doesn’t control it all.
- granzymes 5y ago
  > A lot of users let their guard down because they blindly trust Apple’s marketing, and scammers take advantage of that. This is the "a lot of scammers are better than a few sophisticated scammers" argument, which I disagree with. Users themselves have varying levels of sophistication (unsophisticated scams work just fine on some people), and there are other mechanisms like chargebacks which can unwind damage after the fact. > The fake ratings and reviews are making this even worse by leading people to believe other people have found some of these scams valuable. I have no insight into how well Apple is doing combating fake reviews, but no anti-abuse system is perfect. There is the same question here: would things be worse if Apple didn't police reviews at all. The App Store is broken but it is the least broken of the app stores.

Traster 5y ago

Apple's problem with claiming their 30% tax is to do with maintaining quality of the appstore is how comically small amounts of money they spend policing the appstore. At some point one of these lawsuits is going to have to establish how much they really spend, I would be amazed if they were spending 0.001% of revenue on it.

tlogan 5y ago

I got scammed too. I got an app for $14/week for some LG / Samsung screen sharing. We were in hotel and I wanted to stream something to TV in the hotel room so I quickly downloaded it. Wine did not help :( The app was charging me for one month. But then it disappeared from the store. One problem is this weekly schedule: people do not check cc statements on weekly schedule. Also they should sent an iMessage a couple of days before the change.

rchaud 5y ago
> also they should sent an iMessage a couple of days before the change. But then users might disable the auto-renew, and Apple wouldn't get their cut.
- ryanmcdonough 5y ago
  Apple auto tell you if you delete an app with a subscription that there’s a subscription on this and allows you to end it right there.
smoldesu 5y ago
You're forgetting that Apple makes money every time you spend it. They aren't going to stop serving you drinks inside their casino, and they're certainly not going to warn you before you fleece their pockets again.
jackson1442 5y ago
I get an email receipt each time I get charged by an app, and I believe I even get a “trial expiring soon” email before something starts charging me. The few times I’ve accidentally left a subscription running I’ve been able to go to reportaproblem.apple.com and ask for a refund and each time it’s worked without any drama.

dkarras 5y ago

The article's premise does not make sense. This stuff happens despite the tight control, not because of it. If it was uncurated, it would be a cesspool like the Google play store (or ...shudder... the "competing" stores). Having a paid app that reads QR codes is not necessarily a scam. The article admits that 2/3 of the apps they reported were taken down. The article claims: "If consumers were to have access to alternative app stores or other methods of distributing software, Apple would be a lot more likely to take this problem more seriously" Yet then says: "Apple isn’t the only company that struggles with this issue: They’re also on Google’s Play Store, which is available on its Android mobile operating system. But unlike Apple, Google doesn’t claim that its Play Store is curated." ...so lack of competing stores or presence of (imperfect) curation is not the cause, because Google did not even begin to attempt to solve this problem. Play store apps, unless proven otherwise, are generally malware you carry with yourself every day, with potential access to everything in your device because the OS is nowhere near locked down compared to Apple counterpart. Hell, most Android devices ship with undeletable malware from vendors etc. Apple model is broken, but it is the least broken out there. Instead of admitting that, article tries to be a hit piece trying to make the Apple model look worse for the ongoing trial.

echelon 5y ago
Apple's model is the most broken out there. They've distorted our free market into "Apple's market". They tax ingress to 50% of Americans and don't let you establish a relationship with your customers. Beyond that, they make you dance through hoops to build and deploy software. It's a travesty that they won. If this continues, businesses will be paying Apple for customers brought to them by Apple iCar.
smoldesu 5y ago
> Apple model is broken, but it is the least broken out there. This would almost be true if users weren't forced to use the App Store to install native apps in the first place. If I had a choice to use a store like F-Droid on my iPhone, I wouldn't be complaining. However, being forced to use a broken system is still a complaint, even if it's marginally more secure than it's competitors.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

perfectstorm 5y ago

A former colleague of mine put out an iPhone battery extender app as a joke and surprisingly people paid for the app and wrote reviews claiming that this app extended their battery life when the app did nothing other than show couple of graphics. I was amused at the stupidity of the whole thing and I believe he pulled down the app after sometime but the App Store review process is a joke.

simonw 5y ago

I'm quoted in this! Original Hacker News comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26796662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26796662 - then I tweeted about it and ended up talking to the reporter.

amaBasics 5y ago

Apple themselves seem to be intentionally breaking the App Store at times. From the article: > Apple used to have a button [1], just under the ratings and reviews section in the App Store, that said “report a problem,” which allowed users to report inappropriate apps. Based on discussions among Apple customers on Apple’s own website [2], the feature was removed some time around 2016. Why would they remove the ability for people to easily report apps? 1: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/117773.image0.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.dummies.com/consumer-electronics/smartphones/iphone/how-to-report-an-app-problem-from-your-iphone/&tbnid=nYTbylBB3V7KUM&vet=1&docid=DgeFbTcYRiX7VM&w=267&h=400&hl=en-us&source=sh/x/im https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.dummies.com... 2: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6999097#:~:text=Apple%20has%20removed%20the%20feature,option%20in%20iTunes%20for%20Windows.&text=Apple%20has%20removed%20the%20feature%20or%20ability%20to%20report%20bad%20apps.,-All%20one%20can https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6999097#:~:text=Apple%2...

granzymes 5y ago
>Why would they remove the ability for people to easily report apps? Presumably for a reason. I don't work at Apple, so to spitball some possibilities: * The "report a problem" button was being misused and had worse signal than other metrics Apple added. * Legal or Public Relations pressed to remove the button because only a portion of reports were actioned (possibly because of the above point) and it was causing legal/reputational damage.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Even in this most generous possible explanation, Apple removed a quality-control check and didn't replace it with anything.
  - granzymes 5y ago
    My point is that you don't know that they didn't replace it with anything.
    - 5y ago

rchaud 5y ago

> Simon Willison, a software engineer and a former iOS developer [...] owns a Samsung television and went to the App Store on his phone to install the accompanying Samsung remote control app called “SmartThings.” An app called “Smart Things” popped up, claiming to be a remote for Samsung televisions. Willison paid $19 for the app. It turns out the app was pretending to the be the genuine Samsung product. His mistake, he says, was an “assumption that the App Store review process was good,” he said. “I held Apple in higher regard than I did Samsung.” A iOS developer pays $19 for a remote control app on the App Store and defaults to blaming Samsung. Steve Jobs should get a posthumous award for how well his reality distortion field has held up after his death.

tedunangst 5y ago
Huh? He's clearly blaming Apple for violating his trust. He never trusted Samsung.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Clearly he did, because he spent several hundred dollars buying their smart TV.
  - sixstringtheory 5y ago
    > His mistake, he says, was an “assumption that the App Store review process was good He said it was a mistake to think the app store review process was good. How is that blaming Samsung?
  - simonw 5y ago
    I inherited the TV when I moved into a new house.
citizenpaul 5y ago
I've met quite a number of developers that somehow barely have the skills of my grandma using a PC outside of their daily development tasks. Ive seen multiple help desk tickets back in my help desk days where developers got someone to email saying their PC was broken when it was just turned off. My point being a developer does not necessarily make this person somehow less susceptible to app store scams.

williesleg 5y ago

The internet is one of the greatest scams of our time. By the time you realize it, it's too late.

bronzeage 5y ago

To realign Apple's incentives with the consumers again, Apple should be forced to return at least their 30% commission share whenever an App was deemed fraudulent.

haspoken 5y ago

http://archive.is/msY5N http://archive.is/msY5N

baking 5y ago

Does anyone else find it ironic that this is in the Washington Post?

jollybean 5y ago

If you bought a product from Walmart that was not only unsafe, but actively trying to scam you - people would sue Walmart. The claim that 'every app is reviewed for security' should be a giant liability problem. The store model is a huge winfall of profits precisely because they don't have to do any of this. Realistically, if we use brick-and-mortar as a reference ... it might very well be that if you want to do something 'commercial' on a platform, literally using Apple's payment infrastructure, there's probably going to actually have to be more rigorous insight. This will cost Apple a lot, and probably cost sellers a lot as well, I can see it costing $X dollars for the review process then $Y for every upgrade, possibly Z days delay in payments and possibly esceleating % whitheld given market size, until AAA+ confidence rating. All of the ugly things we see in regular finance exist basically for this reason (i.e. VISA chargebacks, bank freezes, paypal holds) etc. etc.. A lot of profits are raised by ignoring these realities. Same goes for Amazon.

jjcm 5y ago

In my eyes the trouble with the App Store is discovery is purely via curated lists and search. The problem with surfacing via each of these two methods is the user has to put trust into the system that what is being displayed is reputable and trustworthy. Apple unfortunately has shown that they prioritize monetary return over best-fit for content, which leads to scams like this. Let’s deep dive into the issues with the two formats they display info in. Curated-list discovery (versus algorithmic discovery such as “top of the week”) tell the user that these apps have been hand selected by Apple for being quality apps. In general though it turns out that these lists are more often lists of apps that make Apple significant amounts of money, changing what Apple is incentivized to display. Take for example the only way they allow discovery of highly rated apps - the “Everyone’s Favorites (highly rated apps)” list: https://i.imgur.com/7D2hvwO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7D2hvwO.jpg. The top spot is held by Tinder, which currently has a 3.8/5 rating. This list very clearly isn’t a list of highly rated apps, only highly used / large money makers for Apple. We see clearly that Apple prioritizes monetary return over accurate results. Search is another example of this. Most search algorithms are black boxes - inputs go in, results come out that we expect to be able to trust. Searching for “Samsung” should bring up apps from Samsung, but instead they return mostly free third party apps with IAP up sells rather than the official apps. Overall the App Store is designed for monetary return, not safety or user trust. Until Apple decides that the long term image / trustworthiness of the App Store is more important than short term gain, I don’t see these issues changing.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

iOS apps trying to push subscriptions which is heaven for scams and fraud.

egocentric 5y ago

Some relevant Apple marketing statements [1]: "The apps you love. From a place you can trust." "For over a decade, the App Store has proved to be a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps." "Every day, moderators review worldwide App Store charts for quality and accuracy.” "Dedicated to trust and safety.” "Apps must adhere to our guidelines.” "From more videos to rankings and reviews, there are loads of ways to help you pick the app that’s right for you.” "ensuring that the apps we offer are held to the highest standards for privacy, security, and content. Because we offer nearly two million apps — and we want you to feel good about using every single one of them." "When you download an app, it should work as promised. Which is why human App Reviewers ensure that the apps on the App Store adhere to our strict app review standards. Our App Store Review Guidelines require apps to be safe, provide a good user experience, comply with our privacy rules, secure devices from malware and threats, and use approved business models." 1: https://www.apple.com/app-store https://www.apple.com/app-store

Black101 5y ago
So does that mean that you can sue Apple if an app fails at any of these? Of course not, because lying for Apple is common business practice nowadays.
- georgyo 5y ago
  "no reasonable person would possibly believe these statements as true." That statement from the courts has allowed all sorts of lying in marketing.
  - Black101 5y ago
    Marketing is about to become a synonym to lying in the legal sense... therefore lying is ok.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > because lying for Apple is common business practice nowadays. To be scrupulouly fair, the "for Apple" is 100% redundant.

efitz 5y ago

It sounds to me as if Apple is doing a relatively good job. The article didn’t give total volume numbers, but 48M USD seems like a drop in the bucket. Only 2% of top 1000 apps? I’d love to see the numbers but I doubt the Play store is even in that ballpark. Like everyone, I would love to see a world where no one gets scammed. Unfortunately there are humans involved so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

jdminhbg 5y ago

There are lots of articles like this that report breathlessly on the numerator but don’t make any kind of effort to find out what the denominator is.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

"[N]early two million apps" and almost all of them are total junk because no one adheres to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines[1]. It's a sea of garbage. Real quality operation you run, Schiller. Every time I browse the App Store I feel like I'm walking through a bazaar. No coherency. No taste. Nordstrom my behind. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

personjerry 5y ago

So there's this "Wrong Button!"[0] in the app store that just plays a "Wrong" sound clip when you click it. And also it has 5 different ads on the screen, an unskippable ad on opening the app that forces open Safari to view another ad, and a "Share" function presumably so they can bombard your friends with ads too. Now I thought this was crappy, and I wanted the "Wrong" sound clip as said by Trump, so last week for fun I made a Wrong button that has no ads, plays the actual "Wrong" clip from Trump, and costs $1 as a one-time payment. I got rejected, because the functionality was too minimal, and they said that I should add features. Hmm. It feels like their approval process is pretty inconsistent, kinda arbitrary. I kinda want to write back to them to figure out what exactly the existing "Wrong Button!" app has that I'm missing, like is ads mandatory? But also I feel like it's not worth my time. Frustrating. [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrong-button/id368793118 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrong-button/id368793118

swiley 5y ago
That sounds like it really should be a web page.
- personjerry 5y ago
  I see what you're getting at. For me, this was a small toy, and websites have maintenance costs while this has none, and that's the tradeoff I prefer at the moment.
- meowster 5y ago
  Web pages require an Internet connection to access, an app doesn't.
  - kevincox 5y ago
    This isn't true. Websites can cache themselves for offline use.

dang 5y ago

Related previous threads: Apple store fake app stole man's life savings in Bitcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956568 - April 2021 (89 comments) Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching the most egregious scams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26888190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26888190 - April 2021 (6 comments) $5M/year VPN scam on the AppStore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26807566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26807566 - April 2021 (6 comments) A top-grossing scam on the App Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228 - April 2021 (269 comments) iOS developer who drew attention to App Store scams is now suing Apple - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504158 - March 2021 (45 comments) Apple cracks down on ‘irrationally high prices’ as App Store scams are exposed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26198098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26198098 - Feb 2021 (5 comments) Apple’s App Store is hosting multi-million dollar scams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069660 - Feb 2021 (8 comments) Developer exposes multiple million-dollar scam apps on the App Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26067364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26067364 - Feb 2021 (8 comments) How to spot a $5M/year scam on the App Store, in 5 minutes flat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26054673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26054673 - Feb 2021 (13 comments) Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 - Feb 2021 (320 comments) Apple Pulling High-Grossing Scammy Offer Subscription Apps Off the App Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18260514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18260514 - Oct 2018 (73 comments) How to scam and get 67k all 5 Star reviews on the app store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034764 - Dec 2017 (36 comments) $80k/month App Store Scam - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156 - June 2017 (195 comments) Don’t Be Fooled: The Mac App Store Is Full of Scams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052127 - Nov 2016 (16 comments)

travisgriggs 5y ago

What's so tightly controlled about Apple's App Store? Maybe the headline is meant to be tongue in cheek contradictory, but if it's teeming with scams, isn't that saying it's not so tightly controlled?

userbinator 5y ago

Meanwhile, we hear the honest developers routinely get screwed over... It reminds me of the "pirates vs DRM" thing.

Keyframe 5y ago

If you've spent anywhere near 10 minutes on the app store, you can tell that outside of top charting apps, app store is filled with shit just as playstore is. From overall nonfunctional quickly made pos to blatant copyright infringement evil shit. Fine, I get it it's hard to curate, but let's not pretend then it actually is curated overall. So, Apple, either do what Nintendo did when they started with NES and come hard on QA or stop pretending.

arielm 5y ago

Like many comments are saying, policing these even more is not an easy challenge, so to say “don’t trust Apple” isn’t really the right attitude IMO. But… what I think would be nice to see from Apple is better visibility into those ratings and reviews so users have more to go on than a single number. Will that alone prevent these from happening? probably not, but this isn’t a fight that can be won with a single battle/weapon.

xtat 5y ago

The illusion of security is worse than no security, etc

makecheck 5y ago

I remember how one person spent just a little time and uncovered one scam after another. It wasn’t even necessary to dig deep in every case (e.g. sometimes it was just “look at top grossing charts”). That is why almost any excuse Apple gives is just not good enough: clearly if Apple had even one person working on this full-time, they should have caught this. Who cares about fancy analysis tools or machine learning until they can catch the big, obvious stuff? We also know from trial documents that they decided ~500ish people was enough to review the millions of apps and app revisions in existence. I don’t even have to do the math and I know that is nowhere near sufficient. Apple clearly is either clueless about this, or does not care, and either one of those is a huge problem. It also means that almost everything they claim about the security of the App Store itself is not true (rather, a substantial portion of the security comes from the OS and device, not necessarily the review).