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Google took three months to remove scam app that stole over $5M
- rvba 2y agoGoogle outsources everything to the lowest bidder, so quality is as it is.
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoGoogle really doesn't want people to know what goes on in pay to win games. While they aren't outright fraud, they are right there. And those apps probably make billions a year.
- FireBeyond 2y agoThis issue is something of a Google thing... But let's not pretend Apple doesn't see pay-to-win games and IAPs as a massive massive cash cow, too. That's not a Google exclusive.
- sabbaticaldev 2y agothis is a post about google
- FireBeyond 2y agoYes it is. But "Google does this!" can have implicit "This is a Google issue", not "This is an issue." (And I say that as someone who has had only iPhones since the Lumia 920.)
- sabbaticaldev 2y agomake a post about apple then in place of asking what about
- FireBeyond 2y ago"Google and Apple both do the same things and it's unpalatable." "Also" is not a deflection of "What about". But if we want to go that way, Google doesn't play selective moral arbiter. "Porn on iOS? Never." "Gambling and PTW on iOS? Hmm. 30% cut. Okay."
- sabbaticaldev 2y agoI don’t care googler, let’s discuss Apple on an Apple’s thread.
- nextworddev 2y agoI know someone who makes $10m a year pumping out absolute garbage games on Android with all sorts of dark patterns, and have the thick skin to give talks at GDC. But if you took out all the scammy apps out of Google or Meta ecosystems, they will be worth far less
- drdaeman 2y ago$10M from garbage mobile "games", and no liabilities? Is it some lucky exception, or that's a norm in the industry? Maybe I should shove up my ideals and principles where the sun doesn't shine, and ramp up a LLM game generator factory trained on a wiki of dark patterns... I will have pangs of conscience, but if it works I'll also have my own place to live and some basic financial security that may suffice if^W when my health degrades. And surely a good therapist would be able to fix the conscience later. (Or does the lion's share of that money goes to the lawyers, haha?)
- hipadev23 2y ago> pay to win games. This has nothing to do with scams, only you disapproving of a monetization model you don't understand while making wildly incorrect estimates.
- immibis 2y agoScams are a monetization model we don't understand and disapprove of, yes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- autoexec 2y agoShe's suing Google for the 5M she lost because "she believed Google was successfully preventing scam apps from becoming available on the Google Play store." and not because it took them so long to take the scammer's app down. If they'd done it within 5 minutes it wouldn't have stopped her from losing her money. I think google should be held accountable for not removing a malicious app from their app store within a reasonable amount of time, but I'm less sure that Google should be on the hook for the money scammers take. Google can and should do a lot more to prevent malicious apps on their platform, and they should be required to respond quickly when the ones they failed to detect are reported to them, but a play store that only allowed/contained apps that Google was 100% confident could never be used to scam another person wouldn't be very useful.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoYou have to be very dumb to fall for scams like this but I've always said these walled gardens make people less safe. People get a false sense of security and outsource their brain.
- Waterluvian 2y agoNot a lawyer nor picking sides but I can see an argument where expectation that scams are removed very quickly would greatly reduce the risk profile. It’s like shopping at a grocery store thinking that recalled foods are de-shelved within hours of a notice but they actually kept selling them for weeks. Much different risk profile.
- otteromkram 2y agoHow would you determine what is a scam app? Number of reports vs installs on Android devices?
- mannykannot 2y agoIf the default assumption for consumers should be that it may well be a scam, and there is no practical way for Google to do any better, then maybe it should take the same default.
- GrassTheBikes 2y ago[flagged]
- petesergeant 2y agoThat’s not my read from the article: > she invested in about $4.6 million worth of cryptocurrency through the app Yobit Pro, according to a recent lawsuit. When the app reflected a balance of about $7 million, Vaca attempted to withdraw the funds, but was told she'd need to deposit an additional $500,000 for "taxes." If you have additional info do share
- Flop7331 2y agoLooks like a typo. Although the initial 4.6 million barely sorta existed in the same sense that all these crypto fortunes did, I assumed they were referring to the +2 million growth as being a further fabrication on top of it.
- trox 2y agoFurther down the article, the lawsuit is cited: "As a result of Google’s material misrepresentations and other deceptive conduct, Ms. Vaca has been significantly damaged, including, but not limited to, financial losses of more than $5 Million, severe emotional and psychological distress, and the loss of the real estate business she spent most of her adult life trying to build," her lawsuit states. So according to the article she did inverst the 4.6m.
- roywiggins 2y agoShe apparently sent $4.6m, over a period of months, thinking she was buying that much Bitcoin, but instead received nothing, not even Bitcoin. Whether you think Bitcoin is real or not, if she'd actually bought Bitcoin she wouldn't be out $4.6m, just up or down depending on what the market did in the interim, which isn't "went to zero."
- jellicle 2y agoThe initial $4.6 million was US cash, and therefore was real, or as real as money can be.
- Aeolun 2y agoIt still boggles my mind that you can build a fortune of several million, but then be naive enough to download a random crypto app off the app store, and expect it to be all sunshine and rainbows. Even several massive legalish crypto empires fell over due to fraud. Using a random one off the app store is a recipe for disaster.
- loandbehold 2y agoMost likely it's an inherited wealth. Florida is an "old money" state.
- SoftTalker 2y agoEven so. In a family with that kind of money to bequeath I would be surprised if the kids were that completely in the dark about wealth management.
- stingraycharles 2y agoWell this case is kind of the evidence that people with access to this kind of money do, indeed, fall for these silly scams.
- pessimizer 2y agoThere's no evidence that this person built up a fortune of several million, rather than having it handed to them by a parent or a deceased spouse.
- Aeolun 2y agoThe article states it comes from real-estate. That implies some amount of buying and selling. Unless they just happened to have a single 5M mansion sitting around.
- fennecfoxy 2y agoSpeaking as a millennial, you don't just "get into real estate", usually it's seeded by a large amount of generational wealth/inheritance. Someone struggling to put a deposit together for their own home isn't going to make bank out of flipping houses and contributing to the shit housing sector. It really is true that all it takes to make money is money, it's almost effortless.
- tomschwiha 2y agoThis seems to be a screenshot of the app, the app offered no transaction fee buying of crypto: https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/0kI_n_a9ntn9iiispSqN-YaCjwR9j7BExFWiLYjrii4TXl7VcYnzoUo-0KVx66Fk1B38=h1024-rw https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/0kI_n_a9ntn9iiispSqN-Y...
- wnevets 2y agoscamming in the crypto space? No way google could anticipate such a thing.
- warkdarrior 2y agoCoinbase also advertises zero transaction fees. Should Google remove their app as well?
- wnevets 2y agoyes. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/sec-scores-big-win-in-lawsuit-against-crypto-exchange-coinbase.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/sec-scores-big-win-in-lawsui... [1]
- burnte 2y agoThat's amazing, it took them 3 months to kill a scam app, but they proactively shutdown smaller apps that break no rules constantly. I swear someone in Google's exec team is going out of their way to make Google products suck. They've all been getting worse for the past several years. Search gives bad results, search qualifiers only work in "verbatim" mode, GMail sucks at spam filtering now, Android is becoming a PITA, Chrome is shoving in new bad features while killing old good features, etc. There was even a big thing about Google Voice having some massive change where lots of features were going away, so I pulled GV out of my life expecting it to go away, and literally nothing changed. It's almost like Google is suicidal and these are calls for help.
- jeffbee 2y agoIt's almost as if both false positives and false negatives exist!
- NoPicklez 2y agoExactly
- wahnfrieden 2y agoGoogle also financially incentivized to be laxer with revenue generating apps and critical of low revenue noisemakers
- JKCalhoun 2y agoAgree. I'm no fan of Google but when you are in the business of enforcing what amount to fuzzy (some would say arbitrary) rules you're going to let some crap slip by, and reject some innocent apps. It's these two tails though that will get the headlines. To be sure, they should be called out for abuses on both sides of the equation, but it's understandable that it's going to happen.
- ImPostingOnHN 2y agoThe criticism seems to not be that they make mistakes, but rather that when they do, they don't care about or deal with the fallout. Everybody is fallible, and that's okay, but only if you own up to it and fix it and make the victims of it whole. If you don't do that, you're fallible and an asshole.
- hansvm 2y agoThis is the company profiting from the obvious fraud, de-funding departments designed to block such frauds, and with a history of using their size to blunder past any legislative sanctions. I'm shocked, _shocked_ I tell you that the fraud benefiting them personally was allowed to go on for so long. In less sarcastic news, I'm legitimately surprised it was dropped in only 3 months. That's a better than average outcome.
- Jean-Papoulos 2y agoHow is Google profiting from this fraud ? I doubt the scammers had any in-app purchases. Maybe ads, but I doubt it too since that would make it look unprofessional and invite more reviews from Google. Also, I don't think it should fall onto Google to protect users from scams. They already provide tools against it, such as reviews on the app's page. It would be like saying the gov is responsible for my losses in a ponzi scheme because the company was registered officially. Unless Google assertively promises users they are protected against scams on the Play Store, they aren't responsible in any way (other then that they try to make it safe because this increases revenue down the line, of course). Falling for a scam is personal responsibility.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoWhile I obviously have no proof that this is what happened in this case, I've seen countless Google ads leading straight to fraud sites and scams like this. Google also claims the 30% they skim off every legitimate transaction (which is insane) is necessary because they make sure the app store only has legit apps. They should be held to that claim.
- Jean-Papoulos 2y agoIn they case they aren't taking 30% since it's crypto (ie you are buying a """tangible""" external product), although you could argue that since the developer account needs to be bought, Google could be held liable this way ? And I don't think I've since them claim such a thing. It would be strange of them to do so, as it opens them to lawsuits such as this.
- system2 2y agoNot victim blaming but wow. Some people are really naive yet they can still have so much money while very high IQ people struggle to make money due to their lack of social skills.
- phendrenad2 2y agoAnd as money is a sign of how society values you, it stands to reason that those people are wasting their IQ because everyone overvalues social skills.
- worthless-trash 2y agoThe big takeaway here is to dress well, scam people with smooth talk and abuse every loophole that exists with abstract business standing between you and the problem. This is just another day for some people.
- OutOfHere 2y agoYes, this will get you a paycheck, but working for such a firm will not improve the general human condition.
- tredre3 2y ago> very high IQ people fall for scams all the time too.
- watercool 2y ago[dead]
- jeroenhd 2y agoIn my country, there's a quite famous case of a high-IQ (autistic, I believe) millionaire CEO who married a pathological liar that told him all kinds of conspiracy theories about the government, Russian hackers, his ex, and tricked him into losing a huge part of his fortune. He had to be kicked out of his own companies because he refused to back down from the batshit insane claims whispered into his ear. High IQ does not make you immune to scams. I believe that thinking you're immune to scams because you have a high IQ only makes you more likely to fall for one some day. In this case, the app looks to be a classic pig butchering scheme, acting as if it were a real cryptocurrency marketplace, letting people trade and exchange cryptocurrencies in a virtual environment. They may have even tranferred small amounts of money out of the "accounts" to make the whole scam more believeable. Once you transfer back and forth a couple thousand dollars, you'd probably think the app is legit, after all, and invest those millions into the lucrative money making app. Only when people try to get all of their profits out, or when the app goes down, do people find out that they've been scammed, but the money is long gone by then.
- stevebmark 2y agoNo settlement should be granted here, on principle. The law should not protect those that use an asset designed to subvert the government.
- samatman 2y agoThis argument would be coherent if cybercoins were illegal, which they are not.
- jeroenhd 2y agoI agree in principle, but the people that should be sued are the scammers, not Google. With real money one could go after the money mule (or dumb scammer) through their bank account. Maybe Google could be liable if the victim paid through Google Pay, but I somewhat doubt that Google Pay will let you transfer half a million. In this case, the victim's choice of virtual currency makes it very difficult to find the criminals. I don't see why Google would need to pay up for that. I suppose it's always worth a try to sue Google, because there's nobody else to sue.
- OutOfHere 2y agoThe government subverts itself by using an asset with an exponentially growing debt.
- nblgbg 2y agoI don't know anything about this app, and this is the first time I'm hearing about it. Does this app somehow generate revenue? Is that the reason it took them so long to act? Or is it that so few people downloaded it, resulting in fewer complaints compared to the number of downloads? I know Google has been getting worse over time. I'm just trying to understand why it took them so long to act when they actively penalize smaller developers!
- omoikane 2y ago> so few people downloaded it The article says "at least five other users of the app had similar experiences", so the lower bound is 5 users in 3 months.
- altacc 2y agoIt's crpyto pig butchering scam. The app is a fake crypto trading app that shows the user a fake balance of their portfolio. The victim is sending crypto to the scammer's wallet independently of the app. They are shown fake profits and when they try to withdraw they are told they need to pay fees, taxes or more deposits to activate the withdrawal. Often this is when victims hand over most money as they are trapped in loss aversion mode, throwing money at the scammer in the hope of getting back what they've sent before. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of these apps but mostly websites active at any time.
- efilife 2y agoHoly shit, this is terrible
- xyst 2y agoPoor woman succumbed to pig butchering scam. Not sure if this is the same woman or not, but I recall another pig butchering scam where the victim also sent family funds to scammer. Honestly, this person must really be well off to be able to send $5M at any time and then be able to keep a lawyer on retainer to litigate against big G
- 19f191ty 2y agoI've reported am explicitly Temu ad a million times and it still keeps appearing. I don't understand why they even have the report feature if they're not going to do anything about it. Feel so helpless.
- Uptrenda 2y agoI don't think we should blame the victim. Tech is insanely complex and some scams are so sophisticated now that if you're not switched on all the time you might get caught. The vector here seems to be an app posing as something trustworthy. Or what she claims as an app riding the reputation of Google. But to me its the same issue underlying phishing: impersonation. Is impersonation fundamentally unpatchable? How does one ever really 'know for certain' that an app, website, etc, is legit? Could this be fixed, once-and-for-all, with something like a hardware device issued to all citizens with early education around scams? Or would scammers still find ways around it with things like misspellings, subtle details in presentation, or what-ever have you.
- immibis 2y agoI am banned from the Play Store for impersonation, even though my app was clearly marked as not being the real one, so they can apparently do it, but only for apps that don't bring in revenue, I suppose.
- joseppudev 2y agofor the interested, there is also the case of scorp detailed in forbes article below https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-app-network-scamming-iphone-users-for-26m-per-month-says-apps-exposed/?sh=305313a07129 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-ap...
- ggm 2y agoPossibly an unpopular view but I can't but think the FTC should be able to issue directions to Google and others which have almost instant effect. "this is a scam, shut it down" should not require them to "get back to you about that" if it comes from the Trade Commission. I am pretty much all-in on more government regulation of Google. Not less. There should be a non-negotiable access path to ask why things happen and an appeals process to their lockouts for end users too. Mandatory human-in-the-loop review.
- drdaeman 2y agoI'm not sure it's a good idea. While such power can be theoretically socially beneficial when granted to truly benevolent agencies under non-corrupt democratic regimes, allow me to introduce you to the Russian Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor as an example how wrong things could get if the agency is not so benevolent. And the issue with regimes is that they can get corrupt. Even the good ones.
- ggm 2y agoSo on that basis you want to close down the FCC, the FDA, FAA... I get where you're coming from, but federal agencies in other domains have an ability to tell companies what to do. They can obligate them to do things. You're opposed to this on principle? Or just the internet?
- drdaeman 2y agoNo, I don't want to close FCC, FDA or FAA. It's only about the media, because the such shortcut in the ability to tell companies what to do could be abused in a way harmful to free speech - and I think free speech is more important than enforcing quick scam app takedowns. However, I thought about this, and what FCC could probably do is enforce content labeling for questionable apps (I think it's in spirit of how their safe harbor rule works) and immediately require marketplaces to mark application as potentially harmful ASAP. That would limit impact to the consumers, but won't let this be directly abused too much, e.g., against activist apps.
- watercool 2y ago[dead]
- perryizgr8 2y agoThis is an example of blatant, obvious scam, but there are also many many others that are technically fine, but effectively end up with the "customer" feeling scammed anyway. Example: There are many apps that will only let you use the functionality if you agree to a 7 day free trial, which automatically starts billing you some exorbitant weekly fee as soon as that trial ends. Google will typically not refund this when a scammed user complains, since they technically agreed to the terms. But IMO this is absolute bullshit. $50/week for a stupid flashlight app is not reasonable anywhere. It shows that the only intent of the app is to trick people. No real user would consider paying that much for what the app offers. But Google benefits from this, so they do absolutely nothing about it, and the play store is full of such crap. The Google/Apple tax on every purchase you make on their platforms is pure profit, none of it is used to make the store better for the customers or genuine sellers. I will avoid spending a single ₹ on these platforms as a result, and will try to avoid ever writing code for their platforms. Either my app succeeds on the open web, or it doesn't succeed at all. I'm willing to give up on the entire mobile market due to this, I'll not be part of a system that exists majorly to trick people into parting with their money and data.
- izacus 2y agoCan someone from US answer why did US legal system fail to punish the people who created a scam app in three months?
- Jean-Papoulos 2y agoProbably because they aren't even US citizens to begin with.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoNor is that Dotcom fella.
- altacc 2y agoThey are far, far from US jurisdiction and the scale of these scams is massive. Right not there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of scam websites and apps fun by these groups. Google "asian pig butchering centers" for some insight.
- izacus 2y agoWhen it comes to IP law punishments pretty much whole world is within US juristiction. So why can't US legal system protect its citizens and needs Google to be the private police for them?
- hi41 2y agoThanks. First time I heard of this. Without knowing all the details, at first sight I thought pig butchering had something to so with manufacturing pork. Dang. It’s something else entirely.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nojvek 2y agoI lost 1 ETH worth of crypto in scam. It was something on the lines of you invest your crypto, and they'd put it up on art assets that would increase in value and you'd get your returns back. I got no returns when I wanted to take it out. Just fake UI showing it was going up when it wasn't. It was a great reminder, that crypto is full of scam. It's not even a great asset to hedge against inflation as it's heavily speculated on. I took all my crypto out and went back to good ol stocks, bonds and gold. Soooooooooooooo much crypto scam.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
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- Elizabeth0147 2y ago[dead]