My Lock Screen

[superhoops]

I am struggling to understand how the app approval team at Apple work. There is an app called My Lock Screen in the UK app store. It is now number three in the Iphone chart and quite high in the Ipad store. It is a blatant scam and doesnt do anything at all that it says it does. There are over 700 reviews of which roughly 500 say its a scam and the other 200 say its wonderful. These are very obviously fake reviews as the usernames all end in a number i.e. joanne4567 or similar.

How do these scams get through the approval process. Its £1.99 so its made a fair amount for the scammer so far. I understand that its not on the US store for some reason but it may be coming so watch out.

I have attached a screen shot of the scam app

 

[Striker9]

Hi superhoops

I have been a lurker at this forum for awhile now but signed up after reading your post because I was wondering the exact same thing!
I just spent the last ten minutes trying to figure out how that app made it onto the app store when everyone is clearly yelling "scam" and "fake".
I am somewhat new to the wonderful world of ios but am learning quickly that Apple may not be reviewing the application process thoroughly enough and perhaps even depends on people like you and I to make a stink about it... Probably because it is still somewhat rare to have a "bad apple" in the bunch, so it is more efficient that they let the majority of apps through and depend on user reviews, complaints, etc to weed out the bad stuff.

This is another topic for another day but being in IT myself I wonder just how long until we see more malicious apps trickling in?
I feel like what is missing most is access to information about the device itself, monitoring background activity and what not. I mean if I am accessing banking or writing work email on this thing, I should have some underlying access to the device. It bothers me that I have to be held at army's length and honestly is why I sometimes consider jail breaking my device in order to be more in control and aware of what goes on with my device.

Thoughts?

 

[Striker9]

One more thing... I got a kick out of the fact that the author for said app states "do not hesitate to contact us at keywordsoptimized[at]gmail[dot]com
Sounds like they might be involved in search engine optimization too perhaps??? Lol Ridiculous!

 

[Midranger4]

Hi superhoops

I have been a lurker at this forum for awhile now but signed up after reading your post because I was wondering the exact same thing!
I just spent the last ten minutes trying to figure out how that app made it onto the app store when everyone is clearly yelling "scam" and "fake".
I am somewhat new to the wonderful world of ios but am learning quickly that Apple may not be reviewing the application process thoroughly enough and perhaps even depends on people like you and I to make a stink about it... Probably because it is still somewhat rare to have a "bad apple" in the bunch, so it is more efficient that they let the majority of apps through and depend on user reviews, complaints, etc to weed out the bad stuff.

This is another topic for another day but being in IT myself I wonder just how long until we see more malicious apps trickling in?
I feel like what is missing most is access to information about the device itself, monitoring background activity and what not. I mean if I am accessing banking or writing work email on this thing, I should have some underlying access to the device. It bothers me that I have to be held at army's length and honestly is why I sometimes consider jail breaking my device in order to be more in control and aware of what goes on with my device.

Thoughts?

App named system tools provides visibility into the real time tasks iOS is performing. I understand your desire for open access, just thought this tool might suffice in the interim. I own it, I like it, I use it at work to assist the web developers coding HTML5 for our ecommerce site as the system logs the tool provides are helpful in isolating bugs. Sure beats a crash back to the desktop and nothing to go on whatsoever. Also has some handy IP tools.

 

[Striker9]

Thanks!

App named system tools provides visibility into the real time tasks iOS is performing. I understand your desire for open access, just thought this tool might suffice in the interim. I own it, I like it, I use it at work to assist the web developers coding HTML5 for our ecommerce site as the system logs the tool provides are helpful in isolating bugs. Sure beats a crash back to the desktop and nothing to go on whatsoever. Also has some handy IP tools.

Hi there!

Thanks so much for the suggestion. Any tool that allows me to peek under the hood is much welcomed. This is why I cannot help but be intrigued by the idea of jail breaking yet ironically I would be putting myself at risk with Cydia's selection which I hear is far less controlled than Apple's review process. But I have downloaded the app you mentioned and so far like it a lot! I'm off now to find out why absinthed is running in the background!

Cheers.

 

[Midranger4]

Hi there!

Thanks so much for the suggestion. Any tool that allows me to peek under the hood is much welcomed. This is why I cannot help but be intrigued by the idea of jail breaking yet ironically I would be putting myself at risk with Cydia's selection which I hear is far less controlled than Apple's review process. But I have downloaded the app you mentioned and so far like it a lot! I'm off now to find out why absinthed is running in the background!

Cheers.

I too have resisted jail breaking. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do so for much of the reasons you describe.

Off to the park. Jail break successfully resisted for yet another day.