Here’s How Easy It is To Scam People on the App Store

Apple is often criticized for not allowing third party stores to offer apps to its users because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving its own App Store an artificial boost due to the anti competitive nature of this practice. In spite of the fact that this is the case, the Cupertino based tech juggernaut often says that allowing third party stores would constitute a risk to user safety.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a developer by the name of Kosta Eleftheriou often tries to poke holes in Apple’s assertions. His latest attempt to do this involved showing how easy it was to scam someone through the App Store. There are four steps that are involved with all things having been considered and taken into account.

The first step is to make a standard, run of the mill app which anyone can do with a bit of basic research. Following this, the scammer needs to invest in some ratings that are not legitimate so that the rating of the app can exceed 4.5 stars out of a maximum of 5. Scammers can then offer a free trial that is unnecessarily hard to cancel and charge up to $8 per week, and the victims of their scams might not even realize that the money is leaving their bank account until it is too late.

App Store scams are easy & profitable:

1. Make a basic app
2. Buy enough fake ratings, ideally > 4.5 stars
3. Charge $8/week after a hard-to-cancel free trial
4. Advertise on social media
5.🤑 pic.twitter.com/m9KkSkx0Ca

— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) October 3, 2022

"Curated by experts." pic.twitter.com/IExDyXrCoQ

— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) October 3, 2022

Eleftheriou didn’t just outline these steps at random. Rather, he showed a real app that is available on the store called Fax from iPhone that is doing just what he has described. This app has over 1,600 ratings and it has 4.7 stars, but the actual reviews are all 1 stars and they describe a very poor experience. That just goes to show that the App Store is not the secure and scam free environment that Apple suggest it is. Rather, it is just as insecure, so this excuse for not allowing third party stores doesn’t seem to hold all that much water.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World