Remember Dash, which we talked about late last week? Apple released a press statement to its various blogger sites today, claiming:
“Almost 1,000 fraudulent reviews were detected across two accounts and 25 apps for this developer so we removed their apps and accounts from the App Store,” Apple spokesperson, Tom Neumayr, said in a statement provided to The Loop on Monday. “Warning was given in advance of the termination and attempts were made to resolve the issue with the developer but they were unsuccessful. We will terminate developer accounts for ratings and review fraud, including actions designed to hurt other developers. This is a responsibility that we take very seriously, on behalf of all of our customers and developers.”
Case closed, right? Well… Not entirely. This was just Apple’s word, without any proof, posted on blogs that often let themselves be used for saccharine Apple PR. Without any proof, how can we know Apple is telling the truth? Do we just believe them because… Because?
The developer in question, Bogdan Popescu, quickly replied in a blog post, and his story is entirely different – and his story is backed up by recordings of telephone calls between him and Apple (which is legal in Romania). I’m not making this up.
What I’ve done: 3-4 years ago I helped a relative get started by paying for her Apple’s Developer Program Membership using my credit card. I also handed her test hardware that I no longer needed. From then on those accounts were linked in the eyes of Apple. Once that account was involved with review manipulation, my account was closed.
I was not aware my account was linked to another until Apple contacted me Friday, 2 days after closing my account. I was never notified of any kind of wrongdoing before my account was terminated.
What Apple has done: on Friday they told me they’d reactivate my account if I’d make a blog post admitting some wrongdoing. I told them I can’t do that, because I did nothing wrong. On Saturday they told me that they are fine with me writing the truth about what happened, and that if I did that, my account would be restored. Saturday night I sent a blog post draft to Apple and have since waited for their approval.
Tonight Apple decided to accuse me of manipulating the App Store in public via a spokesperson.
The recorded phone calls leave nothing to the imagination – they do not line up with Apple’s PR speak at all.
In the recorded phone call, Apple admits that they never notified him at all, despite Apple’s claims to the contrary. Then, they tried to coerce Popescu into publicly admitting wrongdoing – even though he did nothing wrong. After Popescu told Apple he was not going to do that, Apple tells him that he can tell the truth, but that Apple wants to approve the story before posting it. Popescu complies, sends in the story – and a few days later, Apple sends in its blogger army, by falsely accusing Popescu of manipulating App Store reviews.
And the Apple blogger army – and large swaths of the Apple developer community, which I follow on Twitter – immediately crucified him, believing Apple’s every word, without questioning them, even if Apple didn’t offer any proof. Brian Gesiak’s take says it all: “Good to know: if it’s ever my word against Apple’s, I know who the ‘community’ is going to trust.”
Maybe Apple’s bloggers will learn a valuable lesson from this. Most likely, they will not.
So satisfaction. Such wow.
———-
You’re just an account. You’re not a person. By linked accounts, we mean they are linked through your credit card number. Not who you are as an individual person. You’re just a number we take money from. That’s all you are to us.
Our system did not make a mistake. Our system was designed that way, and therefore it is perfect. You have to prostrate yourself before that system, for it is great. You have to admit that you, a money extraction number, was wrong and our system is correct to treat you as a money extraction number. Recite this rosary on your blog. Only then can we persuade our system, which we design and own, to recommunicate you back into our Church.
Well, given that developer can create any number of accounts, the best Apple’s fraud team can do is to note that the same credit card number and devices have been associated with these accounts. There is no way for them to know or verify the developer’s story about setting up accounts for his relative.
Then that is the flaw in their system. People should stop defending a badly designed system where they can’t be verified, or they can’t warn about signing up different accounts with the same credit card.
Or use some other means of identification rather than a credit card. I’m pretty sure there are privacy issues in using credit card numbers for that purpose too.
You can certainly employ Estonia’s system, and require everyone to mail in notarized documents and attend in-person interviews in order to obtain official digital certificates that’s linked to your government ID that can be used for signing and key wrapping, but most other countries haven’t moved there yet.
As for this story, the credit card number is just one piece of information that’s being used by the fraud team. These accounts also shared the same hardware UUIDs.
In Portugal, the Citizen Card is both an identification card and a smartcard that can carry a digital certificate used to sign any digital document. Citizens only have to ask for the feature to be activated at time of emission or renewal (isn’t default, the majority of citizens don’t have a clue what a digital certificate is). It’s already used to sign documents sent to state entities in certain situations.
In characterizing those blog posts as Apple unleashing their blogger army to crucify a developer. I have read all of the blog post you have linked, and feel their tones are quite reasonable, and don’t feel they are accusatory
Edited 2016-10-11 02:58 UTC
Apple claims the following:
1) There were multiple accounts – not contested by anyone
2) One account was engaged in fraudulent activities – not contested by anyone
3) From Apple’s perspective both accounts belonged to the same legal entity – not contested by anyone. Bogdan is clearly an idiot here.
4) Apple tried to contact the fraudulent account owner about it but received no reply – nobody is contesting this. Apple didn’t contact the owner of the other account though but from their perspective, at the time, it was the same person.
5) After the public outcry, Apple decided to fix the situation but only if Bogdan publicly explain that there actually was a second account that used HIS information (billing and hardware) which was actually engaged in fraudulent activity, although not coordinated by him.
Bogdan claims the following:
1) They want me to write a blog post in order to restore my account. Which he did, proving Apple was right with 90% of the facts
2) They never notified me beforehand about what was going on. Which is false, they notified the contact that was provided upon the registration of the fraudulent account. What did he expect, a phone call from Phil Schiller after he doesn’t reply to emails?
Apple’s position seems fair to me and the phone call, although clearly made by a PR robot from Santa Clara, does NOT contradict any of the facts stated by Apple. They just want to make sure that their image is clean.
They took commendable action against activity that we all despise (review fraud) and this one time they went too far and closed an account that was used only for ethical action belonging to the same user. Most fraudulent account owners create multiple developer accounts at the same time.
I believe that Bogdan is crying wolf and screwing Apple’s PR efforts. If I worked at Apple PR (not likely even if starvation was the alternative), I’d screw this kid. After giving him a helping hand, he puts our conversation online? Fsck you! Recording a conversation might be legal in Romania but uploading it online isn’t without the consent of both parties as it undermines the implied confidentiality of the call.
LOL.
It seems to me that this is a case of
Handbags at Dawn
but Apple have a bigger handbag.
Embiggening your product using fake names is a clear violation of Apple’s T’s % C’s. He got caught, Many others seem to be a lot sharper at doing it and evading the Apple controls.
Taking Apple out of the equation and thinking on a wider non IT perspective I’ve seen this in many other fields where people leave reviews for ‘things’.
I’ve seen the same review (word for word) posted about the same Hotel on TripAdvisor and other similar sites with the same dates and different usernames AND the same text used for other Hotels in other destinations again with the same timestamps (or within a few minutes)
Can this be real or is some Ad Agency seeding these fake reviews?
This whole thing is a huge can of worms and TBH, I ignore most reviews these days and get peed off when I get seemingly endless requests to review product XXXX or my service YYYY etc.
I did tell the truth once (-ve review but with a positive outcome) and it was burried so deep by so called different perspectives that I don’t leave feedback on sites any more. Those ‘trolls’ ignored the fact that my complaints were dealt with and the end result was good for both sides.
d3vi1,
Except that it was their failure to resolve the issue that resulted in the conversations being published. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for apple when he is exposing discrepancies in their PR to clear his image, and I hope you can appreciate the irony
Ultimately, I really don’t know if he was guilty of vote fraud or not, but either way it was a bad outcome for users. The ball was always in apple’s court, it could have handled it a lot better.
Edited 2016-10-11 07:21 UTC
If you plan to close 2 accounts with different email addresses, you send an email to both addresses. You don’t just send it to one, assuming it’s the same person reading them anyhow.
That is clearly an accusation that “this developer” (in this context Bogdan) committed fraud.
That is not in line with what was agreed upon in their recorded conversation… The Apple rep on the call clearly states that the fraudulent reviews were detected on one account, the one that was not the account Dash was distributed under. He also agreed that it was at least possible that Bogdan was not aware of or complicit in the fraudulent activity (other than paying for the account) – obviously, since otherwise they would never have reached out to him in the first place.
The fact that the accounts were linked financially doesn’t change the fact that the activity in question only occurred on one of them. The statement “]Almost 1,000 fraudulent reviews were detected across two accounts” is simply false.
What I got out of that call was that Apple wanted it to be made clear they did not make a mistake – that’s fine. Same CC paid the bill, some hardware was used by both, its understandable that it was handled this way (although they really should have sent warnings to both account holders if they determined the accounts linked together – they dropped the ball there imo).
What the developer wanted was simply to be able to make it clear he personally took no part in the fraudulent activity, also completely understandable given the circumstances.
Apple reneged on this quid pro quo – so he outed them. He obviously considers his reputation more important than his Apple developer license.
Personally I applaud the guy, so few people nowadays care about their reputation… Nice to see someone actually give a shit, even if it costs them money in the long run.
Unless you work for them, you have no reason to defend Apple. Because when push comes to shove (don’t forget they basically stole konfabulator, and made life hard for pebble) you have no reason to defend them. In fact, even the iPhone was a clone of the LG prada. They won’t do anything to help you, that won’t benefit them as well. And their app store rules are designed to lock out competitors.
I have no idea why developers haven’t caught onto this yet, and why so many developers act as though they are developer friendly.. They aren’t.
2) What? Apple spokesperson contest that claim. “over two accounts” means that “on both of them”. Apple claim that both where rightfully suspended for violations of T&C.
3) What? Apple should be able to make ANY assumption it wants and people who disagree are “stupid”? Is that serious discussion about corporate-community coexistence? Guy did contested Apples view of the story. Apple even acknowledged that his point of view may be true. (Nice accomplishment for “stupid” guy)
4) No. Apple was able to reach second developer thus, they potentially HAD even back then information’s that both accounts have different contact data in their system. That do not prove that accounts where for different entities. But it should direct Apple to contact both sets of contact information’s, because the contrary that is assumption that despite different contact information’s accounts MUST belong to single entity is simply logical error.
5) Yes. And as one can hear in his recordings, Apple actually promised him a solution that would actually been very good one both for Apple, and the developer and the community. But just few days after that Apple broke the deal. They did state that both of the accounts where involved, and that was AFTER Apple received his story, and after Apple representative acknowledge that it was a possibility.
So either Apple found a proof that developer in question LIED, and in fact he was responsible for those reviews HIMSELF. Or Apple decided to willfully tarnish HIS reputation, and LIE about his actions.
Or what is most probable, spokesperson was not up to date with recent developments, and not knowing that somebody else was already working on good solution, declared OLD version.
Costly PR mistake that would be.
We will see.
Either Apple will produce official apologies, or proof that the developer lied all along.
My first reaction when reading this post was “I bet the iFanbois will try to sidestep the actual issue, by harping on Popescu recording the call & trying to paint it as some sort of egregious violation of privacy.” I didn’t think it would happen so soon, though! I guess it just goes to show: when it comes to Apple apologists, there’s no such thing as being “too cynical.”
Especially since, to my way of thinking, Apple violated every ideal of decency by acting unilaterally with absolutely no possibility to appeal. I’d say he earned the right to record that call, especially since Apple sure weren’t going to actually give him a hearing it would seem.
It all seems unnecessary to have a system in place that punishes the users for vote fraud. Even if apple’s story were 100% true and the fraudulent votes were correctly identified, the system still makes no sense at all: preventing innocent users from installing/updating an app is a terrible solution. A better way to handle vote fraud without hurting innocent users would be to delete the votes and possibly lock them for a punitive period. Also, it’s imperative that the developer get the chance to see the evidence against him and correct the record when apple makes a mistake, which they inevitably will.
Apple owes both the developer and the users an apology. I wonder just how often apple does this to other developers?
But that is what actually happened.
Read clearly what Apple spokesperson said. Both accounts where used to create fraudulent reviews. That is their story. They deleted accounts that made reviews. That there where some apps associated with those accounts was not relevant to the Apple decision making.
But developer in question actually contest those claims. He says no fraudulent reviews where made from his account (to which the apps where tied too).
Those two are contradictory statements. But person who spoke with developer acknowledged that his story is plausible, and they would not allowed him to just post explanations if some fraudulent reviews where tied to his account.
So it was most probably over 1000 fraudulent reviews on account A and 0 fraudulent reviews on account B.
Which also suggest that spokesperson was not up to date with recent developments in this case and merely reiterated old unverified version of the story.
przemo_li,
Another possibility is that the rep knew apple’s evidence of fraud was very weak to begin with: Given the bad press apple was getting over the ban, apple finally contacted the developer to create a narrative whereby evidence not standing up to scrutiny could be dismissed without placing apple at fault. I have no way to know if this is true, but the events and phone call actually make a lot of sense in this context.
Either way, the ball is in apple’s court to release the evidence it has. It could end up being embarrassing for apple or the dash developer depending on who’s version of the story it corroborates. I doubt apple will release anything that embarrasses itself though.
Edited 2016-10-11 15:38 UTC
The much more likely story is that everything we know so far is true, and that Apple thought it could get away with accusing an indie developer in Romania of fraudulent activity, because Apple knows damn well its bloggers and developer community just parrot whatever Apple says. What Apple didn’t anticipate for, however, was the call being recorded.
Let’s also not deny the subtle xenophobic undertones in many of the stories and tweets – this whole air of “well, I don’t mean to imply, but Romania, amirite? *wink wink*”.
So now we have Apple grossly lying in its PR, and even though we have clear-cut evidence Apple was lying, its bloggers and dev community still fully parrot whatever Apple said, without any corrections or apologies.
This should send a clear signal to people developing for iOS: get out while you still can. The platform is pure poison.
Edited 2016-10-11 15:48 UTC
Freeeeeeeeeeeeze
I just listened to the recording here:
https://blog.kapeli.com/dash-and-apple-my-side-of-the-story
TF he recorded the conversation — Talk about manipulation, they don’t want to admit to any wrong doing, they were trying to get this guy to take all of the blame, even though they didn’t email him directly.
No apple you did something very wrong here all accounts associated should have been emailed, you should have told him directly that you suspect abuse from another account linked to his.
It just seemed so sleazy the way that apple rep was talking to him, ugh. Send us your blog post for approval, we have to see and approve anything you write. Man no wonder the apple worshippers stick to such scripted tight conversation pieces.
Ugh, disgusting. Companies shouldn’t be able to get away with manipulation like this.
Don’t buy Apple. Or Microsoft. They consider themselves above the law, and you their subjects.
This case is just one more example.
Has Microsoft ever stuffed up this badly in an app review fraud case? ie, accounting for the fewer number of developers for that platform.
No, but they did promise to move everyone from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows Mobile 10 (except the 4 GB storage devices) and then completely failed to deliver for over half of all devices burning much more people than are burnt by this dash-story.
They also said that with Windows 10 Mobile they would focus on 3 markets: budget/emerging markets, business, and flagship/premium. A year later they are saying they are only going to focus on business.
(This is coming from a 1020 user that got burned, but still loves his 1520 that works great)
Failure to deliver is different from actually making users or developers prostrate themselves as Apple was apparently doing.
It sounds like a good product, but since I refuse to give a cent to Apple and don’t like iOS anyway, I’ve never been able to get it. I bet a lot of others would be interested too.
I wonder if anyone has compiled a list of all the developers who blindly took Apple’s word & joined in dog-piling on Popescu. It sure would be unfortunate if someone were to figure out which apps those developers wrote, and then buy some AppStore reviews for them – or better yet, name-and-shame the ones who have themselves already paid for reviews (you just know there has to be at least a few who “doth protest too much”).
So after all of your hype and complaints about “blogging army’s” and how unfair things are….
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/13/doubts-cast-dash-defense/
Not only does it seem, as each day goes by, that they guy was guilty as first stated, but that he manipulated Apple’s good will to try and get press out of it, despite his guilt.
Does that mean that if he wasn’t guilty that the “blogger army” would have reacted differently? I doubt it. But honestly you are no different. Anyone who wants readership is going to post sensationalized content hoping to attract readers. Its the way it works.
My suggestion is, tone it down and try not to call the kettle black, pot.
Here is the latest update from the developer: http://www.imore.com/dash-developer-speaks-heres-his-full-story
tl;dr It’s my mom’s fault
This about sums it up
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-says-1-000-fraudulent-rev…
Links isn’t clickanle for some reasosn, sorry – just copy and past