How to avoid App Store scams

Despite Apple’s review In the process of processing applications in the App Store, terrible scams sometimes occur. This is especially true for Google’s Play Store, where apps are not subject to manual review before they go live.How to avoid it if you have trouble solving App store scam, you’re not alone. Fortunately, you can follow some useful guidelines to protect yourself.

There are many forms of fraudulent applications.Some will Pretend to be a popular legitimate application– Even spoof the name of the operating system’s own features – just inject your own annoying advertisements that will pop up to steal your personal information or download malicious software.Other scams Provide simple service, And only charge high subscription fees until users are allowed to try the app on their own and then fail to deliver. Regardless of the form of the fraud, the best protection is to avoid the complete installation of these applications. With this in mind, here are some key signs that need attention.

Don’t believe in stars

Both Apple and Google highlight the average star rating of each application, allowing you to quickly and easily understand how users view the application. An app with an average rating of 4.7 stars may be more trustworthy than an app with an average rating of 1.7 stars, right?

Unfortunately, this is not that simple. Not every star is accompanied by written reviews, and it is relatively easy for malicious participants to reduce the scale by generating (or buying) quality ratings to play the game. Although many people who actually use it hate it, the app has hundreds of bad reviews but has received thousands of 5-star ratings, which seems very popular.

This was discovered by the developer Kosta Eleftheriou while researching an app with a 4.6-star rating. Eleftheriou found the vast majority of written comments Has a 1 star rating. Looking only at those ratings that accompany the reviews, the app’s rating dropped to 1.6 stars, which is a huge difference. If an app looks like 4.6 stars, then a reasonable expectation is that there is at least one reasonable choice. some Written reviews with higher positive reviews, but most negative reviews say differently.

This usually happens with popular applications that have basic, easy-to-copy features. Eleftheriou said: “Most crooks will focus on high-traffic keywords and categories, such as wallpapers, weather, scanners and VPN apps, etc.” Then, they checked some popular apps and cloned their basic functions. The focus is on more information on how to attract new users and get them to sign up for the service, hoping that they will forget to cancel or don’t know how to do it later. “

Eleftheriou is currently suing Apple Suspected of abusing its monopoly power.

Read reviews (not only the initial review)

Since star ratings can be deceived, it is worth reading the reviews yourself. However, if you think this means you can catch a glimpse of the first couple, then here is the bad news: these are also playable.Small handicraft industry Review seller presence So shady developers can buy fake reviews to improve the performance of their applications (or damage the performance of competitors) in order to get a higher ranking in the application store.

A common trick for comment manipulators is to use a virtual account to mark a specific fake comment as “useful”, which will make it appear higher in the comment list. If you scroll to the comments section on an app list, the first few comments you find can sometimes be artificially pushed up. Swipe to see more of the list of fraudulent apps, and you may start to see very different comments.