The owner of US cryptocurrency, bombarded the Apple App Store on Tuesday, accusing it of allowing fraudulent applications, which led to him being defrauded of $600,000 in bitcoins.
When we viewed your encrypted currency wallet in February of this year, we found an install on the iPhone application is fraudulent. This app was supposed to be a companion app for Treznor, a maker of cryptocurrency storage devices, but it turns out that it has nothing to do with the company. This mistake made Cristo Duluo pay a heavy price. He claimed that he had lost 17.1 bitcoins, which were worth $600,000 at the time.
The app is listed on the Apple App Store under the Treznor brand, although the latter has not developed an app for its hardware wallet. Instead, scammers created the app and submitted it to the Apple App Store in January to try to steal Bitcoin.
Christo Duluo checked his Treznor wallet and found that there were no bitcoins in it. He said that the rating of this app is close to five stars, which makes him trust this app enough and willing to download it. Since then, Christo Dulu has also filed a complaint against Treznor, accusing the company of not reviewing the app before it initially appeared in the app store. Christo Dulu said: “They (Treznor) have failed my trust in them, and Apple should not get away with it in this matter.”
According to Apple, this app changed its purpose after entering the app store. Initially, this app was submitted for review in the form of a cryptocurrency app, but it does not involve any cryptocurrency, so it was allowed to appear in the app store from January 22nd. Later, the application changed its purpose and became a cryptocurrency wallet, which was not allowed by Apple. After receiving Treznor’s notification about the counterfeit application, Apple removed the application and banned the developer, but soon another Treznor application went on sale.
Although Apple did initially prohibit the use of cryptocurrency wallets in its app store, it changed the rules in 2014 and also imposed many restrictions on how these apps operate. There are many ways to buy cryptocurrency from the iPhone and other Apple hardware.
Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz (Fred Sainz) said: “User trust is the basis for us to create an app store, and we have always kept our promise over the years. In rare cases, when criminals deceive our users, We will quickly take action against these people and prevent similar violations in the future.”
Apple said the company removed about 6,500 apps from the App Store in 2020 because these apps have “hidden or unrecorded features”, many of which are fraudulent apps.
Christo Dulu is not the only person affected by this scam. It is said that five people have reported a total of 1.6 million US dollars in theft through the iOS app. The fake Treznor app in the Android app store is also believed to have stolen a total of $600,000 in cryptocurrency.
Fraudulent apps and other bad behaviors are still major challenges for online stores like the Apple App Store. A study published in March stated that the new fraudulent software “Fleeceware”, which relies on high subscription fees on iOS and Android, has caused consumers to lose more than $400 million.
Developers also complained that these fraudulent apps tried to copy existing app features, including marketing videos, but charged users for subscription fees instead of providing all the promised features. These complaints include how these apps manipulate app store ratings to obtain high scores and counteract negative complaints by obtaining false likes.
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