The iOS App Store is still, by far, the best mobile application store on the market. Not only because it is the store that generates the most income for developers, but also because it has a series of quality standards that the Cupertino company itself imposes. However, not all the bush is oregano, and scams are becoming more and more common (unfortunately) in the App Store.
We refer to a curious report published in Medium that has brought to light as some applications are capable of earning up to € 80.000 by misleading users.
The example that Johnny Lin gives us is that of Mobile Protection: Clean & Security VPN, an application that obviously we are not going to promote or link in any way for obvious reasons. Once this application is located among the ten that have generated the most income in the productivity section of the App Store, the writer realizes that something strange is happening ... How did that strange application get there? Simple, we are faced with the increasingly common scam in various applications that we have been finding in the App Store, the confusion between subscriptions and payments through TouchID.
According to Tower Sensor, it has been possible to identify that this application has been able to generate up to $ 80.000 per month. But ... what will be the key to your success? The fraud. When you start using the application, it will remind you that you are facing a trial period, but not only that, but it indicates that you must put your finger on the TouchID to proceed to use the application, notifying you that you will pay no less than € 99,99 for the weekly subscription (yes, you read that right, subscription of almost € 100 a week). And the problem is not only there, but in reality the application does absolutely nothing.
How do they get so much money?
Basically, they make the method of canceling the subscription very difficult, so every week that we manage to cancel the charges, These are weeks that will cost us € 100 periodically. Peculiar way of looting users, but we are not going to assign the entire blame for this almost illicit practice to the dishonest developer, and that is that we have to delve to the root of the problem, because Apple has a lot to do with the issue of how less cautious users can fall for such traps.
We refer to the "tops" of Apple. It is clear that the algorithm of the App Store in terms of hits and "tops" is getting worse. Not only have numerous apps of dubious style and quality crept into the free top in recent months, taking advantage of fake reviews and downloads from China's tech farms, they are now sneaking into the free market. top of ingresos. This search mechanism is often used by many users, in good faith of the quality of an application, due to the amount of money that users are willing to spend on it. Nevertheless, find this type of application surrounded by others of proven quality such as Evernote o OneDrive, causes only an effect called to other users.
We are thus facing another failure of the App Store, and it is not only that Apple is letting its guard down in recent times, since the ban on the freemium model is completely open, but dishonest developers are increasingly informed and specialized in the art of cheating. The Cupertino company should undoubtedly remedy this type of practice by tackling the root problem, and ending once and for all with this type of campaigns of Chinese origin that only reduce the App Store to the content that you could find in the Google Play Store, full of low-quality applications whose only intention is to stoke your credit card the maximum possible.