In March 2021 Avast shared a list of over 130 apps present on the Apple App Store that had the “official” objective of offering a service to the user, the occult one was however cheat him. They were interested in the money of the unfortunate, and unfortunately the news is full of similar discoveries. The point though is that second vpncheck.org Apple’s work to remove them or host a secure version on the virtual store for iPhone, iPad and Mac has proceeded and is proceeding very slowly.
The portal has estimated that more than a year after the publication of the list (you can find it at the link in STREET), about 60% of those apps are still claiming victims: last month 84 fraudulent apps out of 133 identified by Avast they are still on the App Store to carry out their occult job, for a turnover (but perhaps it would be better to say “scams”) which according to the portal’s estimates in June alone reached 8.6 million dollars . Projecting the data on the whole year the estimate is 103.2 million dollars.
The apps in question are fleeceware, a label affixed to those software that are not malware in themselves but that still take possession of the money of the unfortunate through subscriptions of which the user is totally unaware, hidden in footnotes and described briefly. They typically attract users with free trial periods to then charge for unsolicited subscriptions. Unfortunately, it is a well-established practice, which a couple of years ago we gave space to in this article.
The slowness of Apple, therefore, would weigh on the pockets of unsuspecting users, and the opinion of the portal is that it is not a coincidence. In fact, Apple earns on commissions, for which every transaction made on the App Store apps, obtained by deception or not, generates an income for the company. On the other hand, Cupertino’s declarations have always been very resolute on the issue of safety. Apple has strongly opposed sideloading appsciting the motivation that the user’s safety, by downloading the apps elsewhere and not from the Super safe App Store, it would be weakened.
To make the words credible, however, the App Store should be really armored. And it seems there is still some work to be done.
