Scam iOS movie streaming apps have 2 million installs and collect $6 million in revenue
FlickType developer Kosta Eleftheriou is warning iPhone and iPad users that the App Store contains several illegal movie streaming apps that have been trying to pass themselves off as genuine streamers for months. According to U.K. tabloid "The Sun," these apps use movie trailers and photo filters to trick users. The apps also ask consumers to type in codes or share the app to unlock extra features.
If this doesn't make Apple look bad enough, the company takes its usual 15%-30% cut from the revenue generated by the illegal movie streaming apps from users who pay for a premium subscription tier.
As you know, we always warn our readers that if they are about to install apps from unknown developers, checking out the comments section will give them clues about the legitimacy of these apps. Eleftheriou says that the illegal movie streaming apps garnered negative reviews that proved that they were illegal. To promote the illegal apps, social media influencers with "millions" of followers were used.
Eleftheriou ended up suing Apple claiming that the company turns its head to copycat apps and iOS scams. He has since gone on the offensive against Apple by pointing out rip-offs in the App Store including some children's apps that turned out to have a secret online casino. Earlier this year, Eleftheriou discovered an app in the App Store called StringVPN that was taking in $1 million a month even though it was a scam.
Kosta Eleftheriou's FlickType keyboard can be found inside the App Store
The developer noted that "While Apple is failing to police its App Store, these (illegal movie streaming) apps have amassed over 2M downloads and are now generating ~16,000/day or about $6M per year." And Apple's cut amounts to a pretty decent chunk of change. Even Apple's own Eric Friedman, head of the Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk [FEAR] unit, had nothing positive to say about App Store security calling it akin to "bringing a plastic knife to a gunfight."
Friedman (no relation to this writer) also stated that the App Store review process is "more like the pretty lady who greets you… at the Hawaiian airport than the drug-sniffing dog." Go through the streaming movie apps on your iPhone and check out the comments section in the App Store for all of them. If there are red flags for any of these apps, make sure that you uninstall those immediately.
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