14 DAY TRIAL // A fake app that pretends to be an official setup for Amazon’s Alexa managed to climb the download charts for the App Store.
It seems that only the Google Play Store is vulnerable to fake apps that are designed to take advantage of people’s trust in a platform. Apple’s App Store is just as vulnerable, and the latest “Setup for Amazon Alexa” is proof of that.
The application not only managed to stay in the App Store, which is tightly controlled by Apple but also climbed the charts. This is not all that easy to achieve, but it somehow hit number six in Utilities and ranked 75 in Top Free. Most applications in the App Store don’t even dream of getting that high up.
How is this possible?
Surprisingly, the fact that it managed to get that high up in the App Store is not a mystery. That can be easily explained by Christmas. Evidently, a lot of people received or bought an Amazon Alexa and started searching for a tool in the App Store. The surge of searches and users propelled it to the top.
Unlike the Google Play store, the App Store is much tightly controlled, and each app gets evaluated before being allowed. Numerous high-profile apps, from big companies, were turned down, but somehow this fake, which didn’t seem to do much got through the approval process.
Fortunately, “Setup for Amazon Alexa” seems to be only a fake, and not a scam. Just a few weeks back, users discovered that fitness apps were using the Touch ID feature on the phone to trick people into spending money.
Soon after users started to figure out that it was a fake, the “Setup for Amazon Alexa” was taken down, and it’s no longer available, which means that the fame was short-lived.
