Fake app reviews
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Step 3: Profit.Įleftheriou’s Twitter thread highlights some of what he says are “hundreds” of fake five star reviews which are being used to drive Watch owners toward downloading the malicious clones - using wording that refers to non-existent features or references things you’d be doing on other types of devices (suggesting the text may have been cut and pasted from genuine reviews elsewhere). The other is flooding listings with fake five star reviews to ensure the app’s overall rating remains high. One component of the manipulation involves posting generic platitudes to do the bare minimum required by Apple to manage (genuine) negative reviews. They make you write a review to ‘unlock’ and then they ask for a payment.” Even one of the ‘five’ star reviews warns: “You need to pay if you want to use the T9. The pattern repeats across negative reviews. Please kindly email us once more via to describe more your scenario so we can support you as soon as possible.” Unfortunately, we haven’t received your email yet. WatchKey’s response to another abysmal verdict on its software? More platitudes: “Thank you for your feedback. But I haven’t gotten a response, I would advise to find a different app.” I haven’t been able to get T9 to work on my watch, I’ve also reached out to the customer service email that’s listed on the app. “I bought this app to use T9 on my watch. “Terrible,” writes another one-star reviewer. Please kindly email us to describe more about your scenario so that we can support you as soon as possible,” is WatchKey’s generic response to the one-star review. “We are so sorry for any inconvenienced caused. I can’t even get it to work on my watch,” runs a one-star review of WatchKey, one of the rival apps Eleftheriou has complained about - which nonetheless has a higher overall rating than his app owing to also having a very large proportion of five-star reviews. It’s only if you take the time to read through the comments that alarm bells might start ringing… You might expect quality to float to the top of the App Store but the trick is sustained by the clones being accompanied by scores of fake reviews/ratings which crowd out any genuine crowdsourced assessment of what’s being sold.įake reviews outnumber the real deal. The scam goes like this: A bunch of Watch keyboard apps are published that purport to have the same slick features as FlickType but instead lock users into paying eye-wateringly high subscription fees for what is, at best, a pale imitation. The problem for Eleftheriou is all his genuine hard work is being undercut by copycat app makers who are able to leverage weak App Store enforcement to profit unfairly and at his expense.
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Even though the overall rating means other Watch keyboard apps are ‘rated’ higher overall. Other times he thanks users for raising bugs that he says have now been fixed.Īnyone reading how specifically each complaint is addressed would be confident the developer of FlickType is working hard to make sure the app meets customers expectations. Missing features are another common issue - and in many responses Eleftheriou responds by saying he’s added the setting the person was after (such as the ability to disable Auto-Correction) or highlighting a “brand new look & feel to make typing even easier”. Sometimes complaints are related to Watch platform issues outside his control (as Apple limits how third party text input can be accessed). But if you take the time to dig in the developer can be seen responding consistently and constructively to issues being raised by users who leave lower scores. The overall rating from users currently is 3.5 because a number of lower scores have pulled down the average. User reviews also include a large amount of glowing five-star ratings.