Did you know Beware iOS and Android users, these shady apps have costed Apple App Store and Google Play users more than $400 million with around a billion downloads from all over the world
You may know some popular and authentic apps on App Store and Google play having a large number of downloads and earning a lot of money. Well, there are fair apps and developers that you can trust and enjoy on the internet, but, unfortunately not all of them are trustworthy, there are around 204 scam apps on Apple Store and Google play that have made more than $400 million according to the security researchers from Avast. Now the question is how these scam apps which are also called fleeceware make a lot of money from the App Store or Google, they actually, attract people by giving them free trials but then they change it to high recurring subscription services. These fleeceware apps mostly include musical instruments apps, palm readers, media editors, PDF readers, QR code scanners, camera filters which now a days people like to use.
According to the security researchers, more than 71 percent of detected fleeceware apps are on the App Store because the iOS users have to pay for most of the apps they use, but recently Apple took some serious actions against those developers who charge a high subscription but in return, they do not provide any quality services. The Apple Company decided to remove such apps from App Store. There are still around 134 scam apps on App Store with more than 500 million downloads and Sensor Tower made an estimate of the earnings of these apps that these apps made more than $365 million in revenue. However, Google Play has fewer scam apps but still; there are around 70 apps that have earned more than $38.5 million with same number of downloads as they have on the App Store.
These scam apps mostly target youngsters because they attract more to the catchy advertisements, some relaxing and playful themes on social media networks and these fleeceware apps promise them the free installation at the beginning or free download but in the end when they download such apps for free, these apps charge a lot of money. According to Avast, these apps have charged more than $3,432 monthly from an individual when their parents noticed the payment records from their credit cards. You cannot mark these fleeceware apps as malware and they have a place on App Store and Google play and these apps even have access to the official advertisement channels and for showing a genuine image of the app, the developer of these app rely on fake reviews.
In February, one developer of Apple sued the company for giving a place to these apps on App Store, but App Store and Google play are taking some strict actions against these fleeceware apps by providing more transparency in the in-app purchase and the subscription of such apps will be decided according to the quality of services they provide to the users. However, users should be also aware of such apps which provide a free trial in the beginning and latterly charge such a high cost. Here are the lists of all those fleeceware apps users should avoid or delete from their device to stay on the safe side.
Scam apps on Apple App Store, iOS Users Should Avoid
Scam apps on Google Play Store Android Users Should Avoid
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