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- Hacker News
- Unfortunately, it seems they don't have efficient ways to prevent scams like that.
Your case reminded me the ledger fake app that was available there and lead to some millionaire losses.
Even more unfortunate is that the android store also isn't free from this risk =/
Ah, almost forgot, I wish good luck solving this issue!
by Rophlock - Thanks! Its so weird that Apple claims the App Store monopoly is necessary to ensure they can vet apps and protect users - but then they don't even let you report an obvious scam.by pentacent_hq
- No, it's notorious that they don't.by PaulHoule
- So what's the app?by KiDD
- clipgrab.org
See my other comment for further details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838328
by runjake - After some sleuthing, the app appears to be ClipGrab.
Legit website: https://clipgrab.org/
App Store link to alleged "fake" app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clipgrab/id6761039605
As far as I can tell, the App Store app doesn't claim any affiliation with clipgrab.org or the open source app. It doesn't even do the same thing.
by runjake - Well done! I didn't want to promote either the app or the fake listing, but you did find it. As you can see, the App Store listing uses the ClipGrab icon (which isn't on the website but you'll see it if you download the app) and, well, the name. It also claims to be "Trusted by 1M+ users" ... while having 6 reviews with an average of 2/5 stars.
So yeah, it doesn't claim to do the same thing in the description - but it's vague enough that a casual reader might think it does. And the fact that they use the name and the icon makes it pretty obvious that they're trying to trick people who are looking for an iOS version of ClipGrab into paying them money. This is also made evident by the fact that I have received a number of complaints from users who were convinced, they had paid for a "pro version" of ClipGrab that was now simply not doing what they expected.
by pentacent_hq - You don’t explicitly say why you think Apple should take action. You don’t say you own that trademark, or that doing that is against the license of your open source app.
Which of these is it?
> I reached out to Apple via their trademark complaint form a week ago. All they seem to have done so far is forward my complaint to the author of the scam listing.
What else would you expect them to do in that period? You told them “App X is breaking trademark Y that I own and I didn’t give them permission to do so”. They can’t take that at face value, so they asked for a rebuttal. A week isn’t too long a period to give them to reply, isn’t it?
by Someone - The App Store listing is pretty clearly a scam and the app is clearly pretending to be my app when it isn't. It's also not some small obscure app, it is well-known enough that there there are Wikipedia articles in serveral languages about it.
So Apple should really be taking action on both counts, in my opinion.
by pentacent_hq