AppStore Comment Scam

Brooke — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:40:52 +0000

Now here’s an interesting story. In the past I wrote about developers using certain application title tactics to get to the top of the application list giving their app more publicity. This was fixed when Apple quickly implemented a new listing strategy. We have also talked about how developers have had friends or employees write reviews on their applications, giving them a high star rating, making the application look worth the money. This was fixed when Apple created a new policy that required users to purchase an application before leaving a comments. Well, it seems that some developers (probably more than Apple would like to admit) have found ways around this as well.

It seems that the developer of SantaLive had an ad on amazon (amazonmechanicalturk) that offered to pay $4.00 to anyone who would leave a five star comments on the application. The application itself costs $1.99 so the person would basically be making $2.00. The writer of the comment is instructed to leave five periods at the end of the comment in order to be recognized and therefore reimbursed. Of the 24 comments the application currently has, five of them seem to follow the five period rule. Though, this does leave me skeptical of the 18 other five star reviews (one person gave the app 1 star for comment cheating! Ha!).

I must say that I am not extremely surprised and have, on more than one occasion, been convinced that the reviews of an application are scams.

The image above is from the WIRED article.

Apple iPhone School » SantaLive

AppStore Comment Scam