As the old mantra goes, “Cheaters never prosper”. In this digital age, it may be time to revise that saying. Granted a veil of anonymity by the Internet, cheaters surely prosper from their cheating; it’s just that when they get caught, they go down hard. Alas, “Cheaters may temporarily prosper – but if they get caught, they’re totally boned” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Such was the case earlier today, when the development company behind over 1,000 iPhone applications was busted scamming the review system. In a flash, the developer — and all one thousand of their applications — have been pulled from the store.
On Saturday, a friend of the iPhone photography blog Iphoneography reached out to the blog for a bit of help pooling details on what he believed was a review scam. While looking through the applications offered by Molinker, he noticed that as many as 90% of the reviews on some of their applications appeared to be written by a group of people who only reviewed Molinker applications. On Molinker’s “NightCam Pro”, for example, 42 of the 44 5-star reviews appeared to be fake.
Once they’d managed to accumulate enough data that the tomfoolery was almost undeniable, iPhoneography and the original sleuth both sent a 5+ paragraph report of their findings off to Apple’s VP, Phil Schiller.
At first, there was no response. Had their complaints gone unheard? Was Phil Schiller’s inbox but a brick wall in disguise? Then it happened; in the blink of an eye, all trace of Molinker was gone. Not only had the reviews been pulled, but the entire catalog of Molinker’s 1,011 applications had disappeared.
Schiller later responded via email, saying “Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.” (There’s gotta be some joke here about Phil Schiller doing away with a mountain of shilled reviews, but I’m not going to be the one to write it.)
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a developer with many hundreds of applications in the store feel the crush of Apple’s banhammer, but it’s the first time to my knowledge that Apple has ever made a huge blow against review fakers.
[Via Giz]
justice. boom, roasted.
WOW, so when your apple application didn’t push-through, what’s the solution?
Call the BOSS, in this case it’s Mr. Jobs.. and plead
“we all learn that from the ifart ‘failed’ app, don’t we?”
http://bit.ly/mr-ifart-didnt-fart-but-plead-to-iphone
WOW, so when your apple application didn’t push-through, what’s the solution?
Call the BOSS, in this case it’s Mr. Jobs.. and plead
“we all learn that from the ifart ‘failed’ app, don’t we?”….
http://bit.ly/mr-ifart-didnt-fart-but-plead-to-iphone
100k apps, and 1 of thousands of scammers was responsible for 1% of all apps
if you add up the scammers that make crappy apps, that leaves you with like 20k actual apps
now divide the number of fart apps, flashlight apps, and worthless apps, and your left with nothing.
sorry, i had to say this. you can never hit zero when you are dividing ;)
“100k apps, and 1 of thousands of scammers was responsible for 1% of all apps
if you add up the scammers that make crappy apps, that leaves you with like 20k actual apps
now divide the number of fart apps, flashlight apps, and worthless apps, and your left with nothing.”
Another troll coming out of the wood work.??????
If 1 out of 100 makes it worthless, Just how worthwhile is Microsoft??? :-)
Just a thought.
en
What’s this, another mac user desperate to defend an app store full of worthless apps? You can’t honestly believe many of this company’s thousand apps were worthwhile, can you?
All apps in the app store aren’t worthless, but this makes it appear as though a large part of them might be.
The only thing I can say is WOW. He should be punished for sure but he has a lot of apps. I am sure people have paid for them. why not pull all reviews instead and ban the users that made the false reviews? Clearly they are sudos of the developer. I am sure that Apple will refund the money to those paying patrions that have bought these apps as there is clearly no way to get updates for them now. *Exaggeration*
Hey TC, Where is the coverage of the JooJoo press conference? Not interested in being the first to coverage the release of this interesting tablet device?
Here is the answer :
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/rupert-murdoch-google-nsfw/
That is not relevant coverage. How about responding to Fusion Garage’s claims?
TC has some good stuff but you gotta call a spade a spade. Arrington’s and Fusion Garage’s stories are poles apart. Somehow, their’s sounds a little more plausible.
Ha, I think you missed the point of that. To sum up, the message is to shut up and stop telling him what to write about.
Shutcho mouf foo :(
you’re obviously a shill.
Wow, this reminds me of the trickery people used to manipulate eBay bidding.
1,011 apps is a lot of programming to lose just because of stupidity!
1,000 apps is a lot, but if a developer can churn out 1,000 apps in less then a year they must have been really crappy apps in the 1st place.
and you assume that based on your poor coding skills and lack of time/project/lifecycles management, right??
No, you’d assume that because anyone who relies so heavily on quantity and fake reviews obviously was more interested in driving profit from crap apps and fake reviews than spending the time and effort writing good apps that people actually would want to buy. But you’d have to read the article to know that instead of just reading a comment and writing a nasty, poorly thought out reply.
“1,000 apps is a lot, but if a developer can churn out 1,000 apps in less then a year they must have been really crappy apps in the 1st place.”
Not if you look at the catalog. While it’s technically true that they had a thousand apps, most of them were actually the same app with different content.
Molinker seemed to specialize in travel apps. They would collect a bunch of information about a tourist desitnation–London, say, or Dublin, or Disney World–and put it into a reader app. The idea is that tourists visiting that place would buy the app and use it as a tourbook.
So really we’re talking about just one app, basically a crude ebook-reader-like thing, that was bundled with tourist information for different locations. The development time was just for writing the little reader program, and after that it was simply a question of getting the tourist information from wherever they got it from and stuffing it into the reader, then selling it as a “new app.”
more coming soon..
Well it’s good that they were banned from the store but it’s time for someone to prosecute them for fraud. The “fake” reviews lead people to buy the apps so that’s fraud. “bookem Danel”
I believe the name you are looking for is Danno or Dano….WTF is Danel…LOL…I can understand mistyping an L for anO, but where did that e come from. :)
Thats a crap load of apps
Apple need to buy Amazon… The number of bullshit reviews there is depressing.
“they’re totally boned”?
Totally.
Like a chicken.
Or de-boned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lj1zeAiYWw
That’s a crap load of apps that made it through Apple’s acceptance program. Don’t tell me any company can possibly make 1,000 useful apps. Apple could have intervened, oh, almost a thousand apps ago.
Well if they banned every app developer who cheated the “very easy to game iphone review system” they would be down to less apps than droid…
makes you wonder is they didn’t do anything at first so they could wait until they crossed that magic 100,000 mark.
Now Apple only has 99,000 apps. Aww…
That’s awesome. I remembering thinking lots of their reviews seemed fake.
Wow, someone over at Molinker just got so fired.
Apple needs to get rid of that prompt asking for reviews when you delete an app. It really drives down ratings for free apps, cause people try it, delete it and leave one star rating.
I had tech savvy people asking me how to rate an app without deleting the app…
Exactly. Stupidest rating idea ever. no wonder everyone games it. Are you sure you want to delete the app? Um, let me give it 5 stars because it annoys me so much and I don’t even want to look at the icon anymore!
Do the apps that were banned also get removed from the devices? Do people who bought them get refunds?
They don’t get removed from your phones, but you’ll never be able to get another update.
“you’ll never be able to get another update.” or a refund. apples hangs on to its 30%. cha-ching.
Usually not; if you bought it you get to keep it.
As someone who actually purchased one of Molinker’s apps, this is very welcome news.
Joo Joo comes out this Friday! Awesomeness!!!
http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/07/crunchpad-manufacturer-changes-product-to-joojoo-promises-launch-this-week/
What’s to stop this app developer from re-naming and re-branding their company and games and “launch” again?
I am the person who unearthed this AppStore fraud Molinker! So Thank you for posting this article. It’s truly about how one major fraudulent developer got a bit cocky at his own expense. And how Philip, Glyn & Myself hope to make this a positive outcome for current & future AppStore consumers.
Cheers SCW
why did you even care, you self-righteous fucker ?
gmoney == molinker???
well done SCW… there are a lot of crap apps on the store.. and now there are less
I personally think Apple should be more fussy about the apps it has on the store… there is a flood of apps with dubious value or use…. designed to trick the consumer into buying them…. (people need to take more advantage of the refund you can ask for with crap apps (via apple))
Why not fix the problem by deleting all the questionable reviews, and informing the public of them? Some of those apps may well be useful despite the attempt of the company to pump up its reviews.
We don’t ban companies from the Internet for hiring “search engine specialists” to try to get them a better Google rank.
unfortunately 90 % of the appstore apps are similar crap…
How many “developers” release 1000 “apps” a year? I’d say the ratio of actaul useful to complete and utter crap is 1:100.
A “new” app can be nothing more than a previous app with a new background. OK, maybe that might be caught…But some apps do only one thing, like check a single stock. The developer can easily ‘create’ a ‘new’ app by simply changing the link to a different stock! DOH! Amazingly, people buy this trash!!! I guess they own more than one stock? LOL!!!
No offense to our friends in the Far East but I’ve found that 99% of these “fake reviews” are written in very suspicious Engrish. “Me love this app long time.” While fake reviews are certainly a worldwide phenomenon, I think many of these garbage apps can only be produced in countries where labor costs are super low. A $75/hour US programmer isn’t going to spend 100 hours on an app that might make $1000 a year. But a $5/day programmer will. Apple should require developers to provide a little more info on who they are, where they are, and how to contact them. An email alone just doesn’t cut it.
Dude, you have no idea what you are talking about are you ?
1) When you sign up they request a lot of information, including your address (which is then also confirmed by the payment provider)
2) What would the address tell you anyway ? Do you really think that developers who aren’t born in the part of the world where you happen to be born are any less good because of the happenstance ?
3) You know of $5/day developers ? Pls. share their contacts.
Louis-Eric,
Your address point is elusive. Most Asian and Eastern European dev shops use local fronts.
The request itself is elusive: pls. tell me which conclusions will be derived from knowing the precise nationality of the developers ? What difference does it make that the app itself can’t show ? Personally I don’t give a rat’s bottom about where the devs are born (or currently reside in); I care about good products. The rest is just xenophobia, which is something that should be practiced with a wet towel behind closed doors, not shown to everyone.
@3) You want to be looking at India to get 5$ a day devs… but obviously they’ll be pretty crappy. To get anything decent from India, spend 50$ a day and you can get good ones as well.
They don’t need to be from India to outsource the crap codding to India. They probably used Mturk to crowd source the review scamming.
Racecrunch
@Johnny
What exactly are you advocating here? That Apple not accept apps from developers in the “Far East”? Shame on you.
They can now go and develop on Android, do their scam and prosper there…to the detriment of users.
Thanks Apple for clearing the mess !
tons of companies are faking app reviews, asking family and friends to give 5 stars and write favorable comments – this is hardly touching the amount of fraudulent reviews in the App Store
Why anyone is surprised is beyond me, any review system is bound to be gamed
Let me get this straight, so if I have a competitor who I want to oust, all I have to do is pay a bunch of interns to write positive reviews only for that developer’s apps, and that’s it?
Looks like Molinker will have to issue $1 “refunds” to everyone their one dollar just like Navin R. Johnson in The Jerk!
I agree with Louis-Eric, an argument could be made that the review/acceptance process should be blind. The app’s use and how it’s crafted should stand on it’s own., regardless of it’s provenance.
I agree. Shouldn’t the review process also reflect customers who think the app is junk?
If 5 stars remained without any dissent then chances are they deserved it.
What happened smacks of command and control. Let the crowd decide!
I really like your sense of humor – “Phil Schiller doing away with a mountain of shilled reviews”
Another one to look out for is a company called AQN that sells an app called ColourExtractor
Priced at
$349.99
For an app that makes you pictures a little desaturated
Buy the app, write a 1-star review and ask for a refund, AQN would lose about $120 on this purchase.
Problem is that they don’t pretend the app to be more than that and $349 is a lot of money to test an app for review.
Actually I honestly believe the $299.99 USD is a TYPO for on release it was on sale for 0.99 & I bought it to see what it was like. As you can still see on the description page it still has the sale blurb “Quick, buy it now! This is a limited time offer!” The developer has OBVIOUSLY made a typo when changing the price to his full price of $2.99 & made an error. The devs site link doesn’t seem to be correct to inform them of this but I might try another option.
No reason to bash these guys for it just looks to be a very honest mistake.
SCW
I wonder if it can go the opposite way. The fraudulent reviewers attack a competitor with 1 star reviews.
I suspect that this happens also
I work as freelancer and on freelancing sites I see several projects for freelancer to write 50/100 fake reviews of apps both on iPhone and android. People bid $20-30 for writeing 50 fake reviews.
If they start looking seriously there will be a huge list.
Shows how you can target a developer for extinction.
Great! This is the sort of thing Apple should be doing. Developers like this who release hundreds of applications (although I haven’t seen this particular devs) which are mainly crap, and who scam consumers, should not be allowed on the store.
I’m sorry I just WILL NOT HAVE these Chinese shills trying to out-innovate or duplicate the processes that we superior Indus have perfected: http://is.gd/5fzOd
I mean seriously:
Registrant Name …………….. Mark Ma
Registrant Organization ……… aSmartVision
Registrant Address ………….. ShenZhen NanHaiRoad No.27, BHVI sub-Building, Room 201
Registrant City …………….. Shenzhen
Registrant Province/State ……. Guangdong
Registrant Postal Code ………. 518067
Registrant Country Code ……… CN
Markie, Markie, Markie… what would your work unit capitán say? Unless you ARE the lead, in which case the gauntlet is thrown!
-Bolly Economist
Looks like more of the “best and brightest” America can’t do without. To China & India, everything is a system to be manipulated or stolen. Never any honest work.
That’s how Apple made it to 1,00,000 licensed apps.
Now it understands it has been tricked in by few miscreants.
The company has other option. Move to Ovi store. The guys over Nokia are not that intelligent anyways.
After having been on the receiving end of a competitor leaving one star reviews in a vain effort to sabotage my sales whilst driving up their own. I say good on you Apple, about time.
I have documented my experiences here…
http://mbarclay.net/?p=203
Oh well! iPhone developers just have to be more honest.
About time…for a company like mine at:
http://www.jonatech.com
I won’t have to compete with bogus competition.
Thanks,
Apple
Any companies effected by this or is it just there own development apps?
Horrible for those companies if so…
Did anyone even bother to look up Molinker’s apps? Many of them are in a “series” of apps, such as the TravelTo app which has one app per city with an offline travel guide, at a low price of usually $0.99.
This is how a company can create 1000 apps relatively easily by working on a single app engine and then adding in tons of syndicated content.
So for all of the “There’s no way you can write 1000 apps without having them all be crap” comments posted so far, the syndication route is one way to do that. Not that I’m saying Molinker succeeded, but someone could use that technique to do a good “series” of apps.
p.s. I’m guessing TC isn’t covering CrunchPad/JooJoo stuff because of pending legal action, so posting “Hey TC why Rn’t U p0sting about JooJOO?!?!?” over and over again probably is not the best use of your time.
One of the reasons why they have so many apps is because they release an app for every location “Travelto” covers.
Note to Jay: the crowd can’t decide as any determined “developer” can create as many accounts as need be to vote their own 5 star reviews as “useful” so that they show first at the top.
iGrind: Skateboard Simulator is a massive scam app. It’s in the entertainment top 50.
Nearly all one star reviews but the developer votes his 5 star reviews as useful to get them to the top.
The “reviewers” who had given iGrind 5 stars used to also have 5-star reviews for the developer’s other apps. these have now been removed… maybe he’s scared about being caught as Molinker were
I think the whole review system is shady. And I suspect that some people do other tricks, e.g. writing and constantly updating bad reviews for competiting apps.
It should become much more transparent, so that anyone could see who has written each review, when and how it has been changed, also see all reviews written by specific users (like you may see all posts by specific user on most of forums). No anonimity, in other words.
LOL, now I know what to do to get rid of a competitor, all I have to do is pay for a few reviews and make sure the reps find out about them. Has anybody thought about whether or not the accuser was someone with something to gain from the downfall of accused? Interesting.
I’m wondering if Apple is going to take any further action, as your article doesn’t state.
And I don’t have time to write the Shiller Shills for Shills joke either….
Oh, I prefer the term, gaming the system. It really comes downto, had Molinker been a little smarter, he wouldn’t have gotten caught.