An easy way to trick $ 80,000 a month from App Store and iOS

This article was shared by Johnny Lin on Medium, which tells about investigating an app with sales of $ 80,000 per month from the App Store.

At WWDC, Apple reported that it had to pay $ 70 billion to developers, with 30% of them ($ 21 billion) paid last year. This amount surged, and surprised Lin because of Lin's friends and he didn't buy more apps last year, and it seems like we do. So he wondered: Where do these revenues come from? This question will be answered in the article, Lin went to find answers to how to earn $ 80,000 on the App Store. He opened the App Store to browse the highest-grossing apps and found a 10th, VPN app, but this is actually a phishing app, it's a VPN app that also has the ability to scan. virus and scan contacts to find duplicate contacts! In-app purchase packages that this app sells to " Internet security " cost up to $ 100 / week, meaning that if you are tempted to buy, you will spend $ 400 per month! Is crazy. Please read through the article to find out how this app is profitable, how similar applications are drawing money from a user wallet, and what you should do to avoid tricking apps like this.

Step 1: Go see if the app earns the most money

The easiest way to see which apps are making the most money is the App Store's Top Grossing card. In addition to familiar names like Dropbox, Evernote, and Microsoft, there's an app ranked 10th with a suspicious name: "Mobile protection: Clean & Security VPN".Note that this information is recorded on 7/6/2017.

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Why is this name suspicious? Firstly, it is blatant and not uniform. Often developers will write the first letter for every word in the app's name, and this word has a strange " protection ". Secondly, it is wrong in English because nouns and adjectives are mixed together. And yet, the mark: is also written very strange and incorrect convention. In English, this app's name is completely meaningless, grammatical. Thinking that it might be a problem with the ranking tool, the guy who checked Sensor Tower to estimate the app's revenue was $ 80,000? WTF? Something is wrong.

That too big number shocked him, click on the developer information: "Ngan Vo Thi Thuy". Meaning this is a VPN service provided by an independent developer, not a company? This is really worrisome and should be "red flag". If you do not know why this is bad, then you can understand this: when using VPN to surf the web, every traffic, data you transmit via the Internet must go through that VPN server. A person who wrote the application name in English is wrong, the application is not clear, no name, can access all your Internet data easily, is that okay? Companies providing VPNs often have to have a clear legal entity, a complex security system, and register with the appropriate authorities. So is a VPN service from an individual reliable?

When clicking on the app to see the description, things get worse. App VPN, but also capable of scanning duplicate contacts, including repeated phone numbers, and the ability to change IP addresses. There's even a "Quick & Full Scan Internet Security" feature - who can find the link between deleting duplicate contacts with Internet security? Scroll down to the comments section, there are only a few general comments like "OK", "Good browser browsing, recommend (!?)" (Vietnamese). Too wrong, too wrong!

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These comments are only in the last 2 months, and according to Sensor Tower, this new VPN application reached the top 20 Productivity from April 20, 2017. Now it really is not good!

Step 2: Install the app and experiment

Just opened the app, the first time there was a problem. The App requires users to approve it to scan through the directory, the problem is that this message continues to spell, and there is only one option Agree. Even if you don't want the app to do this, you have no choice.

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On the next screen, the app reports that my device is at risk of security. Oh, sure. The App shows up a little more to run " Device Analyze " (wrong text), which has two options for scanning both the machine, quick scan and Internet safety. It can be seen that the app is trying to mimic virus scanning applications on computers, most likely to create trust from users to make it easier to deceive.

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Click on the " Device Analyz e" button, the app switches to free space and memory mode and has nothing to do with security or VPN at all. Of course, the app itself cannot do that even if this function is true because iOS doesn't allow it.

When you press either the Quick Scan or Full Scan button , you will see the same message that your phone has no duplicate contacts. " Your contact is cleaned. No dupplicated found ". Continued misspellings on the "p", there is 1 word left over and nothing much.

What if you press the " Secure Internet " button? An advertising announcement will appear, perhaps this is how hackers try to earn a little bit more revenue from advertising. But then, press x to close the message, I need to secure my Internet.

This is the next screen:

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The screen displays a series of options with very attractive words, such as starting security immediately or you can cancel whenever you want. If you touch the "Free Trial" button, the screen will appear:

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Touch ID, OK . Wait a minute, read it carefully.

"Full Virus, Malware scanner": He is certain that no application scans his iPhone to detect viruses or malware, because third-party applications are sandboxed into their own data. , but the guy continues to read . "You will pay $ 99.99 for a 7-day subscription": Buy an app for up to $ 99.99, a shelf life of 7 days !!!!! 7 days spend $ 100 for an application like this, you spend $ 400 per month. An inscription with a small font is inserted into the message, telling him that just by touching the Touch ID sensor, it looks like everything is done, the transaction will be carried out and the money will be deducted from the account .

Lin felt lucky to have read everything in the notice carefully.

Step 3: Why is the revenue so big?

Such suspicious notice, there are too many suspicious points like that but why can the app still earn $ 80,000 per month? If every user is cheated $ 400 / month, then there are about 200 people who are easily lured. The total revenue of this app for 1 year will be $ 960,000, of which Apple holds 30% - equivalent to $ 288,000 - the rest will be paid for who wrote this crazy VPN app.

Do you think this number 200 is less? It may be small, but when you look at the most downloaded app chart, "Mobile protection: Clean & Security VPN" is ranked 144th with about 50,000 downloads in April alone. That means The number of people downloading is very large, luckily many people are awake without being cheated. The customer conversion rate is 0.4%, a bit low, but if you recall that this amount will be charged every week, there is nothing left to say.

The question now is when the new app is posted, why can it reach up to 40,000 downloads? It is possible that this app does a great job of optimizing search results in the App Store. If you try the "virus scanner" keyword, you will see in the top are apps from personal developers, not from big companies, and this is alarming.

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And yet, the first result is run as " Protection for iPhone - Mobile Security VPN ". Sounds familiar, right? Also a VPN app that naturally has a security function, and the "free trial" version of this app also exists in in-app purchase for $ 99.99. The app is currently ranked 33th in the Top Grossing section of the app for businesses, meaning there is one more user who has been scammed by this app. Do not exclude the possibility that they are made by the same person.

Or if you search for the keyword "Wi-Fi", which appears in the "WEP Password Generator" ad, it does a simple task of creating a string of characters and is charging users $ 50 each. month. The data show that this app is earning $ 10,000 per month even though it was only released in April this year. Many similar phishing apps are also appearing on the App Store.

How to prevent?

1. Carefully read the content that the app is capable of doing, and be especially careful before spending any purchase in-app purchases.You need to pay close attention to high value items.
2. If you're not fluent, ask any friend better, or if you can't read English, ask someone to translate to tell you what the item you're going to buy is, how much it costs each month.
3. Pay attention to the words, how to write, how to write the app.Phishing apps are often very sloppy on this side and you can easily find out.
4. When you see an app that intends to scam, report it to Apple by clicking on this link: Contact Us.Choose "Feedback and Concerns" and "Report a Fraud Concern".
5. Share this article, hoping Apple will see it and fix the problems that exist in their systems.

What can Apple do?

1. In the short term, Apple can quickly remove phishing and refund applications for users.Obviously these apps are not too hard to detect.
2. Apple also needs to review the app approval process, especially subscription-based applications because they can charge users several times later automatically.An application like this that passes through the app browser is unacceptable.
3. Notice more clearly when paying for packages.
4. Allow to stop the subscription service when you remove the app, this way the user will not continue to be charged even if they have removed the app from the phone.
5. Looking more closely at the subscriptions, there is no way to announce the Free Trial, but when you click again, you will pay and buy right away, at an exorbitant price !!!
6. Managing ads in the App Store is tighter, eliminating bad apps from the start, highlighting the advertised apps.
7. Giving legal actions and fines to prevent the creation of bad, deceptive applications, instead of just deleting the account as it is now.

It can be seen that the App Store is helping developers develop talent, but in addition to good people, there are still bad people with profound intentions. They do not deserve that money. Users deserve a browsing experience, secure shopping app and meet their needs instead of having to accept sacrifices and endure suffering when something is wrong with them. Apple quickly do something.

Source: Medium + Exquisite