Bitcoin Scam App Approved by Apple Robs iPhone User of $600,000+

[Zito Abroad]

And this is what happens when gulp the kool-aid. You give 100% trust in the walled garden, totally believe the premium Apple charges really is for things like keeping you safe from scams and other security threats. Blind followers are their own worst enemy.

 

[SegNerd]

There are dozens if not hundreds of scam apps that were approved Apple. There are a zillion different apps that say “Make money playing games,” then they tell you that you can cash out at $100, then they make it easy to win $99, and then it is impossible to win any more. I have tried reporting some to Apple and they don’t care. Maybe the dollar amount is lower but they are still a huge ripoff.

 

[citysnaps]

How the heck one hands of $600K of their assets with virtually no due diligence is amazing.

Also amazing are people who believe there are systems that offer 100.0% perfection 100.0% of the time.

Just gotta shake your head and laugh.

 

[btrach144]

This is bad. But if multiple app stores are allowed, this type of thing will proliferate.

Odd because not even Apple can stop it. In fact they approved 6,500 apps with hidden features or malicious intent in 2020 alone. Yikes!

Not a strong argument to block other app stores.

 

[Jony Quest]

Wait. I thought the wallet garden app store was suppose to protect people from this, and that's why we don't have other app stores or allow people to download apps from websites. 🤔

Lol, can you imagine how bad it would be if Apple did NOT pay attention at all & scammers didn’t have to go to these extreme lengths of 1st building an actual legitimate app, then surreptitiously switching it into a different function? Can you imagine how much $ people would have had robbed from them by now??

Oh… you never thought about that at all? You couldn’t care less about anyone or their potential losses? You were just looking for some low hanging fruit to make a stupid & disingenuous snark filled meaningless jab at Apple?

Gotcha. 👍🏼

 

[The_Gream]

Here is something to remember/thank about: Epic, who is calling for open platforms, was able to hide functions in their app and it made it through the App review. To me, the issue seems to be a fundamental issue with maybe how the App review works. Malicious developers put code into their Apps that hide functions while going through the review process and then activates once the App is approved and made available. (Insert classification) humans are doing what they generally do best, find loop-holes to circumvent laws/policy to their advantage.

 

[aesc80]

I remember someone here saying "Apple checks all their apps. They're so secure!" When you consider how many submissions are done at one time, it's nearly impossible for all apps to be spotted immediately as scams. It's one gigantic load that I tip my cap to whoever is on the App Store submissions team. Stuff like this is bound to happen, but I don't blame them.

 

[Fowl]

In the US, at least, liability is shifted away from the final consumer. If you go into an empty lot and break your leg, you can sue the property owner. If a kid eats cat litter, it's the manufacturer's liability for not marking it inedible. A lot of people hate this, but if we're going to be consistent, it sure seems like Apple should be liable for something they had every opportunity for checking before approving it.

 

[contacos]

Slightly OT but I always wonder how Apple checks Apps that download like 2 GB of files AFTER installation, such as games. Surely they could push anything in that download?

 

[hot-gril]

Real banks and financial institutions have protections in place to reduce the occurrence of these scams, or at the very least give a hope of getting the money back. With cryptocurrency there is no such hope.

This is another example of why cryptocurrency is a bad thing, on top of being bad for the environment.

It's not my problem if some fool loses his money. I'm keeping my BTC safe and investing more into it over time.

 

[hot-gril]

This is yet another shortcoming of digital currencies. There is no nation to back them, hence no sovereign to insure against losses.

With a regular currency, the only thing ensured is that it'll decrease in value over time, not even at a fixed rate. If you want to store BTC securely, regular banks can hold it too, with all the same laws governing them. But BTC can be stored however you want, so there are situations like this.

 

[Macropanda]

lmao GOOD. screw crypto tech bros.

Why is it good? This could be some random person investing for their children.

 

[hot-gril]

In the US, at least, liability is shifted away from the final consumer. If you go into an empty lot and break your leg, you can sue the property owner. If a kid eats cat litter, it's the manufacturer's liability for not marking it inedible. A lot of people hate this, but if we're going to be consistent, it sure seems like Apple should be liable for something they had every opportunity for checking before approving it.

It's consistently not this way when it comes to digital technology. Every piece of software comes with a hundred ways to shoot yourself in the foot.

 

[manu chao]

If I'm going to download my banks app, I'm going to make very sure the publisher of the app is actually my bank and not just a 3rd party app that works with my bank. Know who you're giving your credentials to. Don't just assume.

But how do you make sure? Just because the publisher listed for an app has a name that is based on the name of your bank (eg, ‘Bank XYZ Digital Services’) does’t mean it is actually your bank. Apple doesn’t require app or publisher names to be unique or not be based or be slight variations of other apps’ names.

Actual URLs, as used in a web browser, are unique (but still can be imitated by creative use of non-Latin unicode characters), app names are not. The only safe way is to actually go to the webpage of your bank and look for a link there back to the bank’s app in the App Store.

 

[hot-gril]

Actual URLs, as used in a web browser, are unique (but still can be imitated by creative use of non-Latin unicode characters), app names are not. The only safe way is to actually go to the webpage of your bank and look for a link there back to the bank’s app in the App Store.

And even with the URLs, it's not guaranteed unless the physical bank you visited gave you that URL.

The US Census website told me it's legit because 1. it's .gov 2. the https means "it's secure." Well, all it takes is a registrar that gives a random person a .gov, which has happened. And their domain name was quite random.

 

[Maximara]

That's the thing, it had a couple bad reviews. But it also had a nearly perfect rating according to articles out there (most likely fake paid ratings)

That's the thing Kosta Eleftheriou has been claiming on Twitter for months, the rating/review system is broken and should be get rid completely, most people don't know fake reviews on the App Store are as bad as Amazon these days

Actually Amazon has cracked down on this nonsense. There are things I own that I would review but Amazon prevents me because I didn't order through their store.

 

[jimbobb24]

Real banks and financial institutions have protections in place to reduce the occurrence of these scams, or at the very least give a hope of getting the money back. With cryptocurrency there is no such hope.

This is another example of why cryptocurrency is a bad thing, on top of being bad for the environment.

Bad for the environment? Lol. This website is “bad for the environment”.

Cryptocurrency is not the topic but it is the most egalitarian form of money ever created. It does require being very careful because no one secured it. But that also the advantage. No one knows what you buy or what you do with it. Nothing perfect but compared to the alternatives cryptocurrency has some real innovations.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Real banks and financial institutions have protections in place to reduce the occurrence of these scams, or at the very least give a hope of getting the money back. With cryptocurrency there is no such hope.

This is another example of why cryptocurrency is a bad thing, on top of being bad for the environment.

Absolutely! This has nothing to do with Apple. Poor Apple having this on their curated store!

 

[coolkid93]

how much you want to bet apple will do nothing to get this customer his money back lol

 

[1258186]

Do you also think Google should be held legally liable for everyone who loses money to fraudulent emails opened in gmail and forced to repay? Doubt it.

Big difference between emails and apps. Google should be similarly liable for apps on the Google Play Store.

 

[1258186]

Apple want all the benefits of their AppStore monopoly with none of the responsibilities. Total hypocrites.

 

[Orson Farris]

Apple needs to make it clear that their 30% only HELPS safety but does not guarantee it. Apple should stop saying the walled garden is for our security and just admit it's for their profits.

 

[Maximara]

In the US, at least, liability is shifted away from the final consumer. If you go into an empty lot and break your leg, you can sue the property owner. If a kid eats cat litter, it's the manufacturer's liability for not marking it inedible. A lot of people hate this, but if we're going to be consistent, it sure seems like Apple should be liable for something they had every opportunity for checking before approving it.

Being able to sue people has been around for years. AIR 60 Minutes had a piece (back in the 1970s) on a man who practically lived off lawsuits. If you shook your fist at him - boom lawsuit for assault. The way it worked was the amounts were always low enough to make fighting them more costly than settling them.

Interestingly Matpat just recently posted Game Theory: Are Your Mobile Games ILLEGAL? which shows that depending on any government or law to totally protect you is foolish. A good amount of those games violate FTC regulations but the majority of them are way down on the FTC's list of companies to go after. And the few that did enough to get the FTC on their case used bait and switch tactics (also illegal under FTC regulations) to get money before people figured out they were scams.

 

[Apple_Robert]

how much you want to bet apple will do nothing to get this customer his money back lol

There is no getting fake money back.

 

[bousozoku]

1. If you have money involved, you do your research to make sure it's safe.
2. Apple doesn't have enough people checking apps, carefully or otherwise.

Apple should have paid special attention to anything related to money. That app should not have made it to the App Store.

If I'm using my money, I go to the website of the company or group involved to see if they have an official app. I don't blindly download things to take my money.