this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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How's that walled garden working out?
To be fair, things like this are pretty rare.
The more common experience is that those reviewers are anal as hell reject people for petty stuff. This malware guy lucked out and got the burned out app reviewer who didn’t look twice.
They’re rare but they’re very effective, because people have their guard down there.
Yeah, but as the poor sap who has been deemed “computer guy” for every elderly parent, aunt and uncle in the family, I think the Play and App Stores do a decent job of keeping malware in check.
It’s not perfect, but about once every year or two I have to put out a malware fire with a Windows laptop in the family. Dealing with the phones is less of a headache. Especially the iOS devices.
I wish iOS made it easier for people like me to remove those guardrails for my own needs, but for my 80 year old parents, I’m all for keeping them living in Apple and Google’s stores.
Apple can't hear you over the billions of dollars they're extorting.
I am surprised this happened, it’s the first case of anything like this that I have heard of. Do you know of any other cases?
really?
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/25/chatgpt-scam-apps-mac-app-store/
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apples-app-store-approved-these-crypto-scam-apps-how-to-stay-safe
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/developers-complain-that-apple-promotes-scam-apps-on-the-app-store/
Thanks for the links. I wasn’t aware of those, it sounds like PlayStore level of crapware in those cases, although you have to be REALLY dumb to be fooled by such obvious ones. But if you’re a very technically challenged person I am sure it is possible.
But the case with the LastPass clone is definitely much more malicious.
Isn't that Apple's demographic? People get an iPhone or Mac because it just works and they don't have to worry about complexity and choice. Freedom can be paralyzing to people.
That’s oversimplifying it quite a lot. Many tech-educated users, developers, IT experts etc use MacOS/iOS. And many users of Android or other OSes have no idea what they are doing. All the large operating systems today are too wide to have a one demographic, they cover it all.
Pretty well, it was bound to happen sooner or later and thisnis the first time Inhave heard about it
There’s been plenty of malicious apps found in the past. Though, I’m sure the play store isn’t much better. Disappointing that Apple will bend devs over a Barrel sometimes but they don’t find shit like this.
I never said that there wasn't any malicious apps on the App Store, just that this was the first one that I have heard about that actively tries to fake being the official one and managed to get vetted.
There have been loads of dodgy apps on the app store.
Things inevitably slip through the cracks.
I never said that this is the first dodgy app in the app store?
I said that this is the first app I have heard about that pretends to be the official app that have gone through the vetting step on the App Store.
k