Casino app disguised as a kids game on the App Store
twitter.comThe fact that these kind of apps are able to survive longer than 10 minutes after being reported is frightening.
One may argue that there is some misunderstanding but at least immediately blocking the app in the country it undoubtedly misbehaves would be a very logical first step before digging deeper.
Why would Apple not do exactly that?
If Apple turned an investigation team onto the app and pointed all forensics at it, I could see reason for wanting to collect data before shutting it down.
Not that Apple is in the position to put someone under arrest, but I believe LE investigations sometimes allow suspects to walk free in order to observe and collect additional evidence.
I might be misunderstanding but is the app actually just a game that has links to a in-app web view pointing to the shady casino?
I am curious what Apple's vector for checking this would be. Look through an app and any of its links and check against a spam database? Add extra cautions when users click links that link them outside the app (lots of sites do this on the web when leaving their forums etc.)
In this case, it is quite obviously a scam based on the marketing and advertising that has been added as context to the app, but the app alone and probably most of it's app code looks like a running game. (Not absolving Apple, just curious on what they might do here that scales)
How can an app camouflage as another game?
From a kids game to a casino app, this is unreal. The good news is that someone took notice of this exploit.
I hope that Apple will consider this scenario as many kids are using gadgets as means of entertainment.
Based on reading the thread it looks like it opens an in-app webpage that leads to the casino game.
I'm not even sure how Apple beats this back. It would be trivial for an app to link out to nefarious sites (lol ads basically do this all the time).
What if climate activism or animal rights where outlawed tomorrow.
Wouldn't you be really happy that Apple is not paying too much attention to apps and that you are able to sneak "illegal" content into an app?
No one is happy about this but the scammers.
> it becomes an online casino that doesn’t even use Apple’s IAP.
In app purchases (in case you were wondering) and obviously being a hidden casino it wouldn't.
It looks like it is built into a webpage, so it is not even a part of the "app" itself