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I don’t get it. His app was purchased with stolen credit cards so Apple suspended the app? How does that make any sense? Also how do you sell a mobile app with

by tra3 4y ago

I don’t get it. His app was purchased with stolen credit cards so Apple suspended the app? How does that make any sense? Also how do you sell a mobile app without a mobile ecosystems? It’s someone else’s platform all the way down.

aetherson 4y ago
One suspicion is that you're laundering money to yourself. That is, you purchase stolen credit card numbers, then use them to buy your own app, thus turning the cc numbers into actual cash through Apple. But more so, they don't actually care that much about the whys. If your app draws lots of fraudulent purchases, they want it dead. You're just creating negative revenue (when the fraudulent purchases are reversed) and bad reputation for Apple.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Pretty convenient for Apple that they decide that's your responsibiliy instead of theirs. Doesn't Apple dictate that the payment goes through them? If it's such a crime to process these transactions that the guilty drserve to die for being involved or associated in any way, then they are even more guilty and should have killed themselves by that logic. Man these big guys sure do give themselves a great gig.
  - bg24 4y ago
    I do not understand why the above thread is downvoted. Just because Apple has a problem detecting/controlling fraudulent transactions, they want an app to be dead! Kill-x-app-as-a-service would be popular among scammers.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Basically everyone involved in payments has sort of an informal tax on them that they pay to reduce payment fraud. But since it's all informal, there's this constant push-and-pull about whose responsibility is exactly to do what. The way that payment processors see it is that sites that accept payment's duty is to take enough precautions -- based on the nature of their business, the profile of their customers, etc. -- to keep fraud down to a relatively low level. And if your site is a magnet for fraud you've failed to be a good citizen and they're entitled to be harsh with you. They in return eat the primary liability for fraudulent payments -- that is, they may try to recover fraud from the sites, but it's anyone's guess whether they will be able to, while they themselves will always be on the hook for it. From the perspective of especially smaller sites, it can be like, "Wait, what? What were we supposed to do? How were we supposed to even know that people were using us for fraud?" There's definitely a lot of room for the payment processors to misbehave and push more liability onto the sites than is perhaps optimal.
invalidname 4y ago
The competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy his app so he will get suspended. The chargeback costs are heavy so Apple killed the app receiving the purchases.
- musicale 4y ago
  How much did the app cost?
  - invalidname 4y ago
    I don't know. I just read the twitter thread. But chargeback is 25 USD typically (processing fee from credit card companies). I guess Apple gets a discount due to scale but it's still pretty high.
tluyben2 4y ago
Paypal does this as well; our money (a lot of money) got locked because our competitor (we found out years later because they were bragging about it) used stolen/fake cards to buy our product. They don’t side with their client; they side with the money/least risk and hassle. Google does the same with adsense; if you have a competitor which makes a good amount with Adsense, just hire a botnet and have it click ads. Happened to us as well. They should not care about this and just leave it; they know it could be a competitor more likely than it is you (if you make 7 figures for an extended period of time, why would you suddenly do this?); if they can detect suspicious behaviour, why do they care about it and not just filter it? But nope; you get axed and no one cares. It is really very important to make sure you don’t trust one platform when real real starts coming in. If you are around long enough, you will have many bad platform stories. Every moment I see money coming in via 1 source, I get nervous and start planning to diversify that dependency. At the moment Stripe stories keep popping up over here; if you make a lot of money, you should have multiple alternatives or, better, get very close to an acquirer; they will answer your calls and the fees will be lower too; sure it’s more integration work, but if you make enough money, why is that more important than securing your future?

by tra3 4y ago

aetherson 4y ago

One suspicion is that you're laundering money to yourself. That is, you purchase stolen credit card numbers, then use them to buy your own app, thus turning the cc numbers into actual cash through Apple. But more so, they don't actually care that much about the whys. If your app draws lots of fraudulent purchases, they want it dead. You're just creating negative revenue (when the fraudulent purchases are reversed) and bad reputation for Apple.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
Pretty convenient for Apple that they decide that's your responsibiliy instead of theirs. Doesn't Apple dictate that the payment goes through them? If it's such a crime to process these transactions that the guilty drserve to die for being involved or associated in any way, then they are even more guilty and should have killed themselves by that logic. Man these big guys sure do give themselves a great gig.
- bg24 4y ago
  I do not understand why the above thread is downvoted. Just because Apple has a problem detecting/controlling fraudulent transactions, they want an app to be dead! Kill-x-app-as-a-service would be popular among scammers.
- aetherson 4y ago
  Basically everyone involved in payments has sort of an informal tax on them that they pay to reduce payment fraud. But since it's all informal, there's this constant push-and-pull about whose responsibility is exactly to do what. The way that payment processors see it is that sites that accept payment's duty is to take enough precautions -- based on the nature of their business, the profile of their customers, etc. -- to keep fraud down to a relatively low level. And if your site is a magnet for fraud you've failed to be a good citizen and they're entitled to be harsh with you. They in return eat the primary liability for fraudulent payments -- that is, they may try to recover fraud from the sites, but it's anyone's guess whether they will be able to, while they themselves will always be on the hook for it. From the perspective of especially smaller sites, it can be like, "Wait, what? What were we supposed to do? How were we supposed to even know that people were using us for fraud?" There's definitely a lot of room for the payment processors to misbehave and push more liability onto the sites than is perhaps optimal.

invalidname 4y ago

The competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy his app so he will get suspended. The chargeback costs are heavy so Apple killed the app receiving the purchases.

musicale 4y ago
How much did the app cost?
- invalidname 4y ago
  I don't know. I just read the twitter thread. But chargeback is 25 USD typically (processing fee from credit card companies). I guess Apple gets a discount due to scale but it's still pretty high.

tluyben2 4y ago

Paypal does this as well; our money (a lot of money) got locked because our competitor (we found out years later because they were bragging about it) used stolen/fake cards to buy our product. They don’t side with their client; they side with the money/least risk and hassle. Google does the same with adsense; if you have a competitor which makes a good amount with Adsense, just hire a botnet and have it click ads. Happened to us as well. They should not care about this and just leave it; they know it could be a competitor more likely than it is you (if you make 7 figures for an extended period of time, why would you suddenly do this?); if they can detect suspicious behaviour, why do they care about it and not just filter it? But nope; you get axed and no one cares. It is really very important to make sure you don’t trust one platform when real real starts coming in. If you are around long enough, you will have many bad platform stories. Every moment I see money coming in via 1 source, I get nervous and start planning to diversify that dependency. At the moment Stripe stories keep popping up over here; if you make a lot of money, you should have multiple alternatives or, better, get very close to an acquirer; they will answer your calls and the fees will be lower too; sure it’s more integration work, but if you make enough money, why is that more important than securing your future?