Bitcoin Forum

This days it's easier to build fake app with softwares and still had good reviews on playstore, it's damn easy, scammers get their fake app available on playstore and use multiple google accounts to make reviews for the fake apps, this is a warning for those who used ratings and reviews to download apps on playstore

try moving your thread here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0

Maybe they can help you and a more appropriate forum for discussion of various types of scams.
and my feedback regarding Playstore-based applications. It is necessary to be careful. they are the ones who have the ability to make any crafty way.
I recommend avoiding using applications that are too familiar and do not have names that many people know.
indeed, seeing a good rating and review results can be manipulated by the number of accounts. therefore it is better to avoid suspicious types of applications. because it will have an impact on the theft of your personal data. which at any time can be used for criminal acts.

Of course these ratings can not be trusted as people simply buy them. Usually services that pays for like, subscription, followers, comments or reviews pay about 1-3$ for a review.
I even remember earning 5$ on upwork for downloading, keeping app om a mobile for a week and writting a review.

Absolutely. This is the case when the relative freedom to host applications in Play Market has the most detrimental effect, because ordinary users somehow trust the place where they download applications. And it does not matter that Uniswap does not have its own application for smartphones.

Besides securing positive feedback for your own app, malicious reviews are also being used to knock down competition.

I know those developers could spend a few thousand dollars to provide their application a "legitimate" review and then turn scam after. You better watch out on the developers/makers as well, you could do research on them and check out their other projects.

Have you been scammed OP?

---

He could move it there but he is not pertaining to a specific service that has scammed him. I think he just put out his frustrations in this thread.

The reviews can easily be faked by the scammers. if we are talking about playstore and that needs a few seconds to change from one to the another accounts. Imagine when the scammers have so many accounts on gmail.
Never try to use the app that is not yet getting reviews by the reliable parties.
I never try to touch the infamous app on playstore consider there were some hacked cases that's started from the android apps.
The main point to know the reputation of platform or company who was creating the app.

This is not new anymore and we should always do our diligence before downloading anything, if you in doubt better to visit the social account of the project and ask for their application name. Anyway, as long as you don't give any information I think its fine, just delete the app if you see any suspicious activities and don't set the settings easily in favor to that app, reviews can be manipulate always.

Its easier to give fake reviews but its not easier to make convincing amount of reviews so its not too hard to find which one is new and fake reviewed app by noticing the total number of downloads and total number of ratings given.

Exactly the junk applications appear a lot on the store, but actually those are the applications i have never downloaded before, you probably understand why i did not download such applications. Instead of complaining about this, the OP needs to understand that there is competition in any sector, so new applications will always be created, and the OP needs to learn about the origin of those applications as well you do not have to download phishing apps scam.

Isnt' that an old news? Playstore rating and Appstore ratings most of them are a joke. The people reviewing usually don't even know what they are talking let alone the bots and fake bought reviews.
Heck, even playstore had some phishing app published there in the past. Fortunately google acts fast enough to take it down but sometimes you wonder how it could get there in the first place and how many people already phished.

Good point, people still download apps by judging from the reviews and comments but they don't know that scammers are dropping good reviews themselves too, it's just like few crypto wallet bounties on here that gives stakes if you drop good comment about their wallet on google playstore even while we haven't use the app before, I've promoted such project before

Firstly, i do not understand why rating and reviews or fake app has anything to do with the altcoin discussion section of the forum.
Secondly; you are always implored to do your own research because trust are earned; before you use an app; download  etc, you need to find out about it first, especially when they are out of the blue moon apps.

Technical knowledge maybe is needed to understand that application is completely a phishing one but we can avoid such apps by monitoring number of downloads and reading the reviews randomly only if it got few thousands of positive ones.

I know website to find malware exist in the downloaded files but not sure it is capable of finding such cases of fake ones.

I noticed myself than when reading reviews for certain apps the wording is very similar and when checking the usernames it's usually an very common name with genetic numbers behind. I stopped too trusting random reviews on the Google play store.

You can create an email then simply can review any apps and its a know fact that one person can create as much as emails if they want so we actually don't have to trust them but we can take some time to read what has been written on those reviews, if it is actually paid then common opinions were given which you can observe by reading few of them.

many of the ratings and reviews on the playstore are falsified because users are encouraged to give high ratings and positive reviews by receiving points and gifts on applications in exchange

Ratings and Reviews on app store are not true dude, I don't believe on their ratings that was really ridiculous actually.
And I know a lot of the community here in the crypto space don't believe also in such a things. Besides, this kind of topic
was already asked here a couple of months ago now.

It is under standable that they dare to spend money to run ads or do a bonus program for those who review applications positively will receive a certain amount.
But the thing it does is we won't be able to tell if the app is good or not.

Especially for crypto-wallets. There are fakes and imitations.

They are phishing those private keys that a newbie or someone who's not familiar which is fake and not. It's common these days and if you're not vigilant and fond of checking it. Don't download any app that you are unsure of.

Google only removes them when it's reported.

Ratings and reviews in the app Store are unreliable causing many newcomers to have problems google doesn’t remove everything through fake applications and you won’t find the source of most apps in the play store the download link of the source code is given in the description of the open source apps. All other apps will be allowed to be used for free or for a small fee but the source of an app is the developer's own property there will be no interference from you.

You had Been tagged for this one

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=12623

SO if you still want your account clean then stop sending Those links or else you'll be banned eventually .


and Software is not a place to discuss here because this is off topic ,better go to Development section.

I never really trust those ratings and reviews since it could be bias some are getting paid to write good reviews ang give out good ratings to some apps,
While others are destroying it or giving out poor rating even if the app or project is good.

I think it's important to look at the quantity and quality of these reviews. The more there are, the less likely they are fake!

I don't know if it is like that on App Store too but I agree with you on Play Store. There are really many apps that fake comments are distinguished easily in the comments below. We should really be careful before downloading an app. If you don't trust it fully, I don't recommend using it. They can access your private things after giving some permissions to the app and do things that you wouldn't like.

But with most recent android versions you can edit the app permissions by entering into app management setting so you just need to have a closer look at the given permissions to unknown apps and if it is having any permission which is totally unnecessary to the utility of the app then you can consider it as spyware.

I sometimes wonder why the reviewers don't provide evidences to backup their claims/votes. Everyone can just claim whatever they want without a way to verify the claims.
I guess the evidences could be sourced/provided through a fraud-proof manner else this could also be abused.   Maybe one of the ways to do this is to have a feature on the app store to record user's device screen live while testing apps, and automatically upload the recording on the store's review section. Reviewers can then be judged based on the evidences they provide.