Friday, August 9, 2024

Deluge of Fake Mac App Store Reviews

There are a bunch of fake Mac App Store reviews for the Safari extensions Wipr, Dark Reader, and Vinegar. They are #1, 3, and 5 top paid.

Vinegar, at least, is a legit good app.

Jeff Johnson (Mastodon):

I’ve now checked the reviews for all of the current top 40 paid apps in the Mac App Store, and 8 of those apps have a large number of fake reviews during the period of June 11 through July 19. What the 8 apps have in common, besides the top paid list and the fake reviews, is that they’re all relatively cheap, from $1.99 to $4.99 USD in price. Note that only buyers can leave App Store ratings and reviews for upfront paid apps, which makes this deluge of fake reviews especially odd.
[…]
The question is, why are we seeing all of these fake reviews around the same time across multiple top paid Mac App Store apps? I don’t have an answer to this question. My pet conspiracy theory is that all of the fake reviews were purchased by a single developer as a cover for their app. If a bunch of apps have fake reviews, then the fake reviews for the developer’s one app don’t stand out as much, and there’s plausible deniability. But that’s only my theory, with no proof. I could be wrong. One thing is clear, however: Apple has completely failed to prevent, detect, or remove this deluge of fake reviews in the Mac App Store. There has been no curation.

Jeff Johnson:

The fake Mac App Store reviews continue. From Monday, there are now a bunch of fake reviews on the #1 top paid app Magnet.

Ric Ford:

Apple has proven unable (or unwilling) to reliably police its own proprietary App Stores for bad/fake apps as well as fake reviews. Thankfully, a few people outside Apple are at least flagging the problems.

Previously:

Update (2024-08-13): Christina Warren:

Meanwhile, while Apple enshittifes macOS and tries to force everyone to use the absolute ghetto that is the piece of shit Mac App Store, they also approve fake apps. So miss me with this “annoying and bad notifications are b/c Apple cares about user safety.” No. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim the only way to release safe and reliable apps is through a terrible App Store and also approve predatory fake apps through said App Store.

Chris Coleman:

I helped a friend run a Facebook page that we had built up to about 12,000 people — until my friend downloaded a fake “Pages Manager” app for iOS that stole his entire Facebook account and became the owner of the page.

Jeff Johnson: