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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

She's suing Google for the 5M she lost because "she believed Google was successfully preventing scam apps from becoming available on the Google Play store." and not because it took them so long to take the scammer's app down. If they'd done it within 5 minutes it wouldn't have stopped her from losing her money.

I think google should be held accountable for not removing a malicious app from their app store within a reasonable amount of time, but I'm less sure that Google should be on the hook for the money scammers take. Google can and should do a lot more to prevent malicious apps on their platform, and they should be required to respond quickly when the ones they failed to detect are reported to them, but a play store that only allowed/contained apps that Google was 100% confident could never be used to scam another person wouldn't be very useful.

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Considering she was depositing US dollars into the app for several months before she tried to withdrawal and realized it was a fraud, I think that her stance is a bit more reasonable.

She used the app for 5-6 months, presumably with other people having been scammed repeatedly in the past and having reported the app. Then after she reported it to the CFPB (which is an independent government agency dedicated to preventing these types of scams and other abuses of customers), the CFPB spent 3 months of back and forth with Google before they were willing to take it down.

So the argument is that the app was up for several months with the US government directly reaching out to Google and pushing for them to take the app down for being a scam but they ignored that as long as they could and likely ignored plenty of other reports in the past.

At least personally I'd argue that's gross negligence.

I'd say she should lose all of her money for being dumb enough to transfer it to an unverified app.

Then separately, Google should pay penalties to the CFPB for failing to act in a timely manner.

What is a verified app? It's on the app store, these corps punch balls continuosly about having a grip on their stores for safety reasons, but then when there is no safety people is dumb and the apps are not verified on their app stores?

Due diligence.

Nobody should be trusting Google or Apple to be protecting them. Certainly not for a $1M+ USD deposit.

That the app stores are illegal monopolies shouldn't opine on someone suffering the consequences for their own poor decisions.

How do you verify an app?

By lifting the corporate veil and verifying the legal and physical existence of the developer behind the app

I think you're forgetting that the pillar of our economy is trust, and communication, removing the trust and everything collapses, it was engineered like this, our whole economy is engineered on impulses, testimonials, advertising, and shallowness. Remove that, and these corporations save $5m and lose billions.

I agree with you, I wouldn't give someone 10 euros if not vetting, but if google puts "Verified by Play Protect" , restrict me to do anything, talk about their stores as a safe and vetted place, then it must be kept accountable

There's two separate issues here:

1. Dealing with Google's failure to remove in a timely manner

2. Dealing with the fraud

Comingling them creates a slippery slope ("I drove my car into a lake because Maps told me to...") that erodes normal expectations of personal responsibility.

What should she have done to vet?

Go to the website of the party she's transferring the money to and verify the app from their end?

That doesn't seem much to expect for a multi-million dollar personal risk.

Google maps is not responsible for people going in a lake, unless they'd say "USing google maps make you safe from driving in a lake", I think we're not understanding each other, I am not saying people aren't responsible for themselves, I am saying if companies are responsible for what they advertise

A "verified app" is an app that has been verified not to compete with platform owner's products, doesn't bypass their subscription processing and doesn't in any other way cut into their revenue streams. /s

She downloaded an app from Google's store. Google is supposed to vet apps. Google may have even recommended that she download that app.

What level of financial protection does Google provide on apps in their store? Is there a GDIC clause I missed?

"It was in the store" seem an unreasonably low bar for personal responsibility.

I have no idea - and it's not pertinent to my argument.

You're suggesting that Google's listing should take the place of due diligence?

A financial guarantee seems the least I'd require for that, personally.

I would think vetting apps means that the apps work for their intended purposes.

It was in the store seems a reasonably level bar for the app has been vetted to show it works for its intended purpose.

The intended purpose for a "crypto app" is to scam its users. So it checks out.

It was in their store.

How is selling fake investment apps different to selling fake sneakers?

Because an app store will always be a bazaar. No one is doing full human code review on apps.

To pretend otherwise is insane. (Even by appealing to app store monopolies or fees, which are immaterial to due diligence responsibility here)

This wasn't a case of the lady giving $5M to Google for fake crypto.

It was more like Google selling her a phone, then her dialing one of the preset numbers on that phone and getting scammed.

The defense for Apple and Google taking their 30% cut is usually about how they do vetting and take responsibility for their app store being legitimate.

That's a bad argument to give someone hot coffee in lap money for, though.

Google and Apple operate monopolistic app stores with predatory fees.

This lady did something foolish.

Redressing the former by removing responsibility for the latter doesn't make sense.

I'm all for fining Google over this, but the money shouldn't go to the victim.

> That's a bad argument to give someone hot coffee in lap money for, though.

Are you sure?

Didn't that coffee lady originally request just hospital expenses, and then her lawyer told the jury to award punitive damages equal to one day's worth of coffee sales? (Or was it one day's coffee profits?)

Seems rather fitting that Google might pay one day's worth of app profits, if punitive damages are applied to their 3-month delay.

Did Google take 30% of the money she lost?

What do you mean by "unverified"? Who is supposed to do the verification and what do they check?

As far as customers are concerned, google verified that the app does what it says it does. If that were the case and she just lost money from bad crypto investments, that would be a complete non-story. However, that is not at all the case.

This, end of story.

This position would be reasonable if the app stores took 5% but they are a duopoly which take 30%. Visa/Mastercard are in a similar duopoly position clipping the ticket but at least insure their customers.

Does that mean that Google has to return that 30% of the scammers revenue and return it to the people who were scammed?

Do you think that Google forfeits the ad revenue that they receive from selling scam ads? Nah, that goes right into Sundar's pocket.

It's going to give me so much joy when he gets fired.

Ad revenue forfeit does happen, rarely [1], but I think you really need fines. Otherwise its in their favor to collect revenue criminally and occasionally forfeit some.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google-forfeits-500-million-g...

Not sure Google gets a cut of uploaded crypto.

I doubt she deposited so much via in-app purchases. Financial apps don’t have to use them.

Mastercard and Visa often take less than two percent though.

So taking commision from a sale now makes you police, judge and enforcer of laws?

Yes - when your argument for insanely high margins (look at net profit and compare to market average) is that you are locking down the store for the benefit of the user and not to abuse your monopolistic position.

Either they are abusing market position to prevent competition on the store (eg. linking to custom payment providers) or they are doing it to guarantee customer experience (Apple fanboys are really big on this line) - in which case they are liable and it's priced in.

Not a lawyer nor picking sides but I can see an argument where expectation that scams are removed very quickly would greatly reduce the risk profile.

It’s like shopping at a grocery store thinking that recalled foods are de-shelved within hours of a notice but they actually kept selling them for weeks. Much different risk profile.

How would you determine what is a scam app?

Number of reports vs installs on Android devices?

If the default assumption for consumers should be that it may well be a scam, and there is no practical way for Google to do any better, then maybe it should take the same default.

In this case the CFPB apparently was asking them to remove the app for a while before they took it down. No need to even detect the scam apps proactively in that case.

> If they'd done it within 5 minutes it wouldn't have stopped her from losing her money.

There's no reason to believe, and much reason to believe that it's not the case, that this woman was the very first to complain about this app. Perhaps Google had already received thousands of complaints about the app before she ever downloaded it. That info will presumably come out as the lawsuit proceeds.

The main justification offered for walled gardens is that they provide consumer protections. Once that claim is made, "everyone should know that isn't actually the case" is not much of an argument, and "we did the best we could" would be blatantly false here.

Does this apply to Google though? You can download untrusted app on Android phone. The same scam situation is yet to happen on iOS.

This is not a legal justification at this point, yet. More a social one. What laws are currently holding app stores accountable for what's on them?

You have to be very dumb to fall for scams like this but I've always said these walled gardens make people less safe. People get a false sense of security and outsource their brain.

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