Apple Locks App Screenshots To Ward Off Scammers | Hacker News Reader

Apple Locks App Screenshots To Ward Off Scammers

techcrunch.com

45 pointsiProject22 comments

This is very worrying. Due to a small minority of scammers, the entire dev community is being made to pay.

Right now, iTunes Connect is pretty much broken. Sometimes your screenshots won't appear on the App Store, and you have to keep re-uploading them until iTunes Connect decides it wants to properly sync with the Apple CDN servers - even when that happens, often the screenshots order will not be the same as what you set.

Also, this is going to increase review times. Now devs will have to submit 'updates' just to change their screenshots.

What Apple should have done is offered an alternative screenshot review process, that does not require a new app binary to be submitted. Essentially, this current implementation just wastes everyones time.

If they had a screenshot review process then people would be annoyed they had to wait for screenshots to go through review, same as they are now.

Basically, Apple is more interested in protecting their customers than they are about making developer lives easier. As a developer, that's annoying, as an Apple consumer the fact they're taking steps to block scammers is a net positive.

I'd rather wait 1 to 2 days for a quick screenshot review process than 2 weeks as it is now to submit a new binary (and waste the reviewers time for having to review a binary that is actually the same as the previous version) just to change my screenshots. Also, users will then see a pending update for the app, which they will then have to waste time downloading.

Who says it'd be 1 to 2 days for a screenshot review process? I can't see Apple dedicating a team to it, they'd probably dump it in the same queue as app submissions, and whilst a screenshot is significantly easier to test ("Does it look like the app? Yes. Done"), it's still going to not be a one day turn around.

It's a crappy solution to a crappy situation basically.

Dedicating a team? They'd probably outsource it to some business services company.

The real root of the issue is, why do apps called 'Pokemon Yellow' and 'Halo 4' get approved without Apple checking to see if they are published by the rights holder?

I can't say I know for certain, but I thought outsourcing things like that was a bit outside the handbook for Apple?

they outsource the manufacturing of the iPhone don't they?

True, but that's something that occurs at such scale that it'd be unfeasible to try and implement internally.

And when the new update comes out, all the user reviews get wiped/obsoleted.

It's time for a 'flag' button (like how you use to rate an App when you deleted it). Perhaps right after you have opened a new app and closed it App for the first time. If it's fake that's the moment you'll want to delete it and tell Apple.

I wonder why they haven't started automatically suspending new apps after they start getting an abnormally high percentage of refund requests and one star reviews especially if they have words like "scam", "refund", "money back", etc.

Or make this new rule only apply to apps that are less than X months old.

The $100 membership fee just isn't that high a barrier, when each account can create dozens of apps.

Just pay someone to create accounts and simple apps, put them through review, and just leave them out there on sale. Not breaking any rules. You have tons of potential scam apps just waiting, that look no different really than just another failed app that no one buys. And heck, you can even fake buys, and it only costs you 30%.

So the reason why is... there's always another scam app waiting.

This puts an end to testing different variations of screenshots to increase sales (for honest developers).

Now developers have to wait for a full review cycle (weeks) and create a new version of their app only to test different screenshots. There must be a better way.

It would be nice if they allowed submitting many screenshots, approval of all of those, and then choosing which ones to display. It wouldn't be quite as useful but allow some change.

Based on the headline alone I thought this was going be some sort of attack on a local device where the scammer app would go through screenshots you have taken and then display them tricking you into believing you were running the app the screenshot was of. If it had a pin or password field then you could end up mistakenly typing it in!

Shortest TC article ever. Here's the source: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/09/apple-now-locking-screen...

Actual source: https://developer.apple.com/news/index.php?id=1092013a

That is not the source of the 'To Ward of Scammers' part. Apple only tells you what will change.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/09/apple-now-locking-screen... gives an explanation for the 'why':

  "This small but important update shuts down a widely used scam tactic, where
   developers would upload game screenshots to get an app approved by Apple and
   then switch them out with screenshots from another popular app.

   The scam tricked people into buying fake apps with screenshots ripped from
   another, more popular game, or a game that has not been ported to iOS at all."

Yeah, that will totally stop them, while not at all making legitimate use harder.

No, it makes legitimate use harder. It makes things such as A/B testing of screen shots and tweaking of screen shots for marketing purposes harder. For example say you have an app which is a News aggregation app. You want to update the screen shots every now and then to show up to date news articles. Now you can't do that without a binary update.

What if Apple decides to lock down app Descriptions as well?

I think the OP was being a tad sarcastic.

I wonder if they accept GIFs.... :)

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