Apple has banned a Chinese app developer from the App Store after discovering it had faked glowing reviews for many of its iPhone apps. Apple has banned Molinker from its online store after complaints that the Chinese app developer had posted fake glowing reviews of its 1000-odd iPhone apps. Apple’s action meant it removed nearly 1% of the App Store’s collected offerings in one go. iPhoneography, an iPhone photography and videography blog, alerted Apple, and a friend of the site, known as SCW, discovered that Molinker’s apps seemed to have an unusually large number of glowing five-star reviews from just a few reviewers, who commented on nothing else. They sent Apple senior vice-president for worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller an email that included the following text: ‘Please investigate, for I have just looked at 44 of the reviewers who posted reviews for this Molinker Inc app “NightCam Pro” and every review except two of the 44-plus are all fake five-star reviews… ‘If you investigate, all have only reviewed only Molinker apps. [It’s a] little odd that 42 of the 44 US reviews are poorly written and that all users have only written reviews for either all Molinker photography apps (giving five-star reviews to Molinker apps only, [and] no other apps by any other developer) or the same two apps. ‘Ten reviewers only reviewed NightCam Pro and ColorMagic, 24-plus reviewers have only written reviews for six to seven other Molinker photography apps ([giving them] five stars) and one or two are real reviews giving a one-star review.’ Schiller replied: ‘Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.’ Not only have apps of dubious quality been removed from the App Store, but Apple, whose strict control of the App Store has created much bad publicity for it, emerged with credit for acting quickly. Molinker confirmed that it had received an email from Apple, ‘which told us our contract is changed to pending status’.
Source of Information : MacUser January 15 2010
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