Scammy WatchChat Competitors
WatchChat Alex (tweet, Dave Mark):
I have spent the last four years of my life working on my very successful app only to have it ruined by scam apps with very obvious fake reviews as well as false advertising claims that Apple does not take action against. I can literally prove they are fake but Apple refuses to take action for undisclosed reasons, allowing thousands of more people getting scammed by these apps day by day.
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As this app has gained more traction, we see real people rating the app, visualized by the constant stream of 1–2 negative reviews per day. Once the bad reviews get too heavy on the app, the developer just buys more than 200 positive reviews on a single day.
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On their review order, they forgot to change the subject from what they usually order reviews for. The fake reviews literally comment Instagram-related stuff on a WhatsApp app.
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To make these fake reviews look legitimate, the scammers have scraped reviews of MY application.
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The developer uses screenshots… my screenshots!
Previously:
6 Comments RSS · Twitter
I wonder what percentage of Apple's service revenue is generated from outright fraud and deception?
I don't see why Apple doesn't allow for third-party App Stores. They could keep all of the scam apps on the main app store and all of the legitimate apps developers who don't make as much money could host their apps elsewhere. It's a win-win.
@John: I can see lots of reasons why they don't. Every big tech company (like Facebook and Zoom and Google) would immediately start their own "app store" to bypass Apple's approval process and privacy rules. It'd also train 100 million iPhone owners that "installing a third-party app store" is a completely normal prerequisite for installing any app. Then every scam app in the world would follow suit. If you think it's hard finding the right app in the App Store today, imagine how it would be if you also have to find the right app store.
Or did I miss the sarcasm? There's no advantage to Apple to turning their own App Store into "all of the scam apps".
@Ted: I am pretty sure that was sarcasm, yes :)
@John: that was actually really funny , thanks for the good laugh!
>Every big tech company (like Facebook and Zoom and Google) would immediately start their own "app store" to bypass Apple's approval process and privacy rules.
Maybe? But Epic tried that on Android and failed rather hard.
> It'd also train 100 million iPhone owners that "installing a third-party app store" is a completely normal prerequisite for installing any app.
Yup.
(That said, again, was it ever that big of a problem on the Mac?)
> Then every scam app in the world would follow suit
No, they won't. That's the whole reason why the App Store doesn't work: it provides a pipeline for scammers to iPhones. There's no reason why a scammer would try to make their own App Store, somehow get this in front of people (how?), make them install an App Store, when they can just put their scam into the Apple App Store.
