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Apple Bans Another Developer, 1000+ Apps Pulled

21 points by vrobancho 17y ago

GrandMasterBirt 17y ago
Hey, gota admit that its good that apple keeps tabs on such things. If only Ebay did these sort of things.
- lylejohnson 17y ago
  According to the story, Apple wasn't keeping tabs on it. They only took action when an independent third party pointed out the problem to them.
elblanco 17y ago
This should clean up the App store a hair.
jfoutz 17y ago
Neat. All I need is 40 accounts to eliminate my competition.
- quickpost 17y ago
  No Kidding! This sets a dangerous precedent.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  That is, if you don't end up just eliminating yourself. We could also interpret your comment as meaning: "I've already hacked into my competitor's machines, so Apple can trace the IP addresses back to them."
  - jfoutz 17y ago
    Yes, you could interpret it that way... Do you really think apple examined the ownership of each IP? Oh, comcast ip XXX happens to be the mom of the lead sales guy of this app! ban the app! Seems unlikely to me, but I'm not privy to apple's internal investigation system. I'd wager you aren't either ;)
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      It wasn't a commentary on Apple's investigations. It was a commentary on the lack of foresight in your scheme. I see your point though. Tracing IP addresses through an ISP's DHCP is probably way too complicated and expensive for a little fly-by-night operation like Apple. They wouldn't have any pull with Comcast. (Hmmm, your "clever" rejoinder has a few problems of its own. Left as an exercise. Take some advice: Keep your day job. Planning heists doesn't seem to be your strong point.)
bmalicoat 17y ago
Apple should just monitor high volume developers. I'm not saying all developers with 100+ apps are evil, some are ebooks or whatever, but they should definitely keep an eye on them. Many developers with that many apps are doing something weird like splitting an app into 50 overly specific apps or sometimes very shady techniques like in this article.
nearestneighbor 17y ago
Isn't this kind of vote fraud commonplace?
- jsz0 17y ago
  Probably but if they're mixed in with a fair amount of legitimate reviews it's really hard to detect. It sounds like 90% of their reviews were coming from the same users who exclusively review this companies applications.
joshu 17y ago
It seems like cliques like this should be pretty easy to statistically discover. Does anyone have a dataset I could try this on?
- ephermata 17y ago
  There's been some academic work on identifying these attacks recently. Most of the work I've seen crawls social networks directly. You could try contacting the authors to see if they will share their data sets. Representative example: SybilLimit: A Near-Optimal Social Network Defense against Sybil Attacks Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, Michael Kaminsky,Feng Xiao http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~yuhf/yuh-sybillimit.pdf http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~yuhf/yuh-sybillimit.pdf A more recent paper looks at a data set from Digg to discover vote manipulation; the authors are interested in further applications and would probably appreciate your contact. Sybil Resilient Content Rating D.M. Tran, B. Min, J. Li, L. Subramanian http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~lakshmi/nsdi09.pdf http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~lakshmi/nsdi09.pdf
param 17y ago
What happens to purchases already made? Would your iphone still have the app or will it disappear?
- thelibrarian 17y ago
  They stay on your iPhone/iPod. But of course you no longer can get updates. I have the Delicious Library app that the developer pulled due to it violating Amazon's API ToS (as revised after the app was released). It still works, and has even made a device transition (iPod -> iPhone).
webology 17y ago
Apple should automatically flag accounts who release over a dozen, fifty, or so many apps and review each account. This would cut down on abusers and let them focus their efforts more productively.
- weaksauce 17y ago
  I doubt it. If there is significant money in this then the "scammer" will just open up new bank accounts under different names and submit 49 apps a piece. It won't be as easy but it will still be profitable.
selven 17y ago
When trying to look at a product you're thinking of buying, ignore the 5 star reviews. Those are always a mix of fanboys (whose posts amount to "<insert product here> is awes0me!!1!1"), people paid to rate it high and other people who like the product but don't tend to have much useful to say (you tend to already know all of the advantages of the product from the marketing department). Looking at the 1 and 2 star reviews is always better as you tend to get an idea of what the problems with the product are and why you might not like it. A balanced approach will always give you the most information.

21 points by vrobancho 17y ago

GrandMasterBirt 17y ago

Hey, gota admit that its good that apple keeps tabs on such things. If only Ebay did these sort of things.

lylejohnson 17y ago
According to the story, Apple wasn't keeping tabs on it. They only took action when an independent third party pointed out the problem to them.

elblanco 17y ago

This should clean up the App store a hair.

jfoutz 17y ago

Neat. All I need is 40 accounts to eliminate my competition.

quickpost 17y ago
No Kidding! This sets a dangerous precedent.
stcredzero 17y ago
That is, if you don't end up just eliminating yourself. We could also interpret your comment as meaning: "I've already hacked into my competitor's machines, so Apple can trace the IP addresses back to them."
- jfoutz 17y ago
  Yes, you could interpret it that way... Do you really think apple examined the ownership of each IP? Oh, comcast ip XXX happens to be the mom of the lead sales guy of this app! ban the app! Seems unlikely to me, but I'm not privy to apple's internal investigation system. I'd wager you aren't either ;)
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    It wasn't a commentary on Apple's investigations. It was a commentary on the lack of foresight in your scheme. I see your point though. Tracing IP addresses through an ISP's DHCP is probably way too complicated and expensive for a little fly-by-night operation like Apple. They wouldn't have any pull with Comcast. (Hmmm, your "clever" rejoinder has a few problems of its own. Left as an exercise. Take some advice: Keep your day job. Planning heists doesn't seem to be your strong point.)

bmalicoat 17y ago

Apple should just monitor high volume developers. I'm not saying all developers with 100+ apps are evil, some are ebooks or whatever, but they should definitely keep an eye on them. Many developers with that many apps are doing something weird like splitting an app into 50 overly specific apps or sometimes very shady techniques like in this article.

nearestneighbor 17y ago

Isn't this kind of vote fraud commonplace?

jsz0 17y ago
Probably but if they're mixed in with a fair amount of legitimate reviews it's really hard to detect. It sounds like 90% of their reviews were coming from the same users who exclusively review this companies applications.

joshu 17y ago

It seems like cliques like this should be pretty easy to statistically discover. Does anyone have a dataset I could try this on?

ephermata 17y ago
There's been some academic work on identifying these attacks recently. Most of the work I've seen crawls social networks directly. You could try contacting the authors to see if they will share their data sets. Representative example: SybilLimit: A Near-Optimal Social Network Defense against Sybil Attacks Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, Michael Kaminsky,Feng Xiao http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~yuhf/yuh-sybillimit.pdf http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~yuhf/yuh-sybillimit.pdf A more recent paper looks at a data set from Digg to discover vote manipulation; the authors are interested in further applications and would probably appreciate your contact. Sybil Resilient Content Rating D.M. Tran, B. Min, J. Li, L. Subramanian http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~lakshmi/nsdi09.pdf http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~lakshmi/nsdi09.pdf

param 17y ago

What happens to purchases already made? Would your iphone still have the app or will it disappear?

thelibrarian 17y ago
They stay on your iPhone/iPod. But of course you no longer can get updates. I have the Delicious Library app that the developer pulled due to it violating Amazon's API ToS (as revised after the app was released). It still works, and has even made a device transition (iPod -> iPhone).

webology 17y ago

Apple should automatically flag accounts who release over a dozen, fifty, or so many apps and review each account. This would cut down on abusers and let them focus their efforts more productively.

weaksauce 17y ago
I doubt it. If there is significant money in this then the "scammer" will just open up new bank accounts under different names and submit 49 apps a piece. It won't be as easy but it will still be profitable.

selven 17y ago

When trying to look at a product you're thinking of buying, ignore the 5 star reviews. Those are always a mix of fanboys (whose posts amount to "<insert product here> is awes0me!!1!1"), people paid to rate it high and other people who like the product but don't tend to have much useful to say (you tend to already know all of the advantages of the product from the marketing department). Looking at the 1 and 2 star reviews is always better as you tend to get an idea of what the problems with the product are and why you might not like it. A balanced approach will always give you the most information.