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Subscriptions have become a flourishing business for application developers. They accounted for $ 10.6 billion in consumer spending on the App Store in 2017 and are expected to reach $ 75.7 billion in 2022. But along with this healthy growth, a number of scammers are now taking advantage subscriptions to encourage users to sign up for expensive and recurring plans. To do this, they deliberately confuse users with the design and flow of their application, promising them "free trials" converted in just a few days, as well as other deceptive tactics.
Apple will soon have a flood of consumer complaints about the hands if it does not prevail faster on these scammers.
However, the company's goal in recent times has been to convince developers to try subscriptions – even to hold "secret" meetings in which it evangelises the business model that pays a lot to developers (and therefore to Apple itself). Meanwhile, a good handful of applications from bad actors have been allowed to flourish.
Utilities Top Grossing Apps are the worst offenders
Today, the majority of Top Grossing applications from the Apple App Store are streaming services, dating sites, entertainment applications or games. But when you go beyond the market leaders – applications like Fortnite, Netflix, Pandora, Tinder, Hulu, etc. – and you find yourself in the top hundred list of the Top Grossing table, another type of application appears: Utilities.
How do applications such as QR code readers, document scanners, translators and weather apps yield so much money? Especially when some of their utilitarian functions can be found elsewhere for much less, if not for free?
This raises the question of whether some app developers are trying to scam users of the App Store by means of subscriptions.
We found that this seems to be true in many cases.
After reviewing the reviews of leading revenue-generating public services, you'll find that customers complain that applications push too much subscription (for example, by means of persistent prompts), offer only few features without upgrade, and offer no transparency as to the operation of free trials. and make it difficult to stop subscription payments, among others.
Here are some examples. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a representative list, just to illustrate the problem. A recent Forbes article has listed a lot more, if you're curious.
Scanner App – This app # 69 Top Grossing does wonders $ 14.3 million a year for its document scanning utility, according to Sensor Tower data. It also has an incredible number of customer reviews – nearly 340,000 so far, and a rating of 4.7 stars out of 5. This will make most customers believe that this app is good and trustworthy. However, when you analyze critical reviews, you will see valid complaints.
Tap into the app and you will be constantly asked to sign up for a subscription ranging from $ 3.99 a week to $ 4.99 a month, or to start a free trial. But the subscription following the free trial comes into play after only 3 days – something that is detailed in the fine print, but is often missing. Consumers clearly do not understand what they accept, based on their complaints. And many negative reviews indicate that customers feel they have been duped to pay.
QR code reader – Forbes recently discovered that TinyLab's QR code reader was driving users into a ridiculously cheap subscription of $ 156 a year. This has now earned the app the rank of No. 220 Top Grossing on the App Store, and annual revenue of $ 5.3 million.
QR code scanner, via Forbes
Again, this "free" app immediately starts pushing you to the upgrade by starting a "free trial". Again, this test is converted into a subscription. after only 3 days. Can you imagine paying $ 156 a year for scanning QR codes – what the iPhone camera app is doing now in native mode?
Weather alarms – With 4 stars after hundreds of reviews, this weather alert app seems to be convenient. But in reality, it uses a "dark scheme" to entice users to press a button that will allow them to start a free trial or subscribe to a subscription. And it works – to the air of more than one million annual business figure.
A full screen ad appears in the app, offering two buttons – try for free or pay. The small "X" to close the ad does not even appear immediately! Users end up paying around $ 20 a month for weather alerts. It seems … excessive.
Legitimate developers have been complaining about this app for months, but Apple has even presented it on his big screen at the WWDC. (Watch the video embedded below, it's amazing.)
* After talking about this application to Apple, Weather Alarms was removed from the App Store during the weekend.
Translation Assistant – The same developer as Weather Alarms offers this real-time translation application that promises instant translations in more than 100 languages. It has 4.7 stars after nearly 4,000 evaluations.
But the application is also very aggressive to push his subscriptions. At each application launch, a splash screen appears with three different boxes: one month ($ 12.99 / month), 12 months ($ 44.99 / year) or "free trial", which converts users into an expensive package of $ 7.99 / week. after only 3 days.
Meanwhile, the possibility of "Continue with a limited version" is in small gray text intentionally designed to be difficult to see.
The application makes $ 1.3 million a year, by data from the detection tower.
As you can see, the problem with many of these fraudulent applications is that they exploit the fact that users do not read the fine print or allow their design to apply to the correct button to press. This kind of situation is not new, it exists on the Web as long as the software is sold. It's just that now subscriptions are the hippest way to scam.
These developers also know that most people – especially if they have just downloaded a new application – will not subscribe immediately. So they push people to their "free trial" instead. But this "free trial" is actually just a agreement to buy a subscription unless you visit the iTunes settings and cancel it immediately.
Many of these "free trials" also convert almost immediately, which is another way for developers to earn money. They do not give you time to think before you start charging.
"It's incredibly frustrating that little has been done to thwart these scams," said David Barnard, founder and long-time developer of Contrast, whose applications include Weather Atlas and Launch Center Pro. "This undermines trust in the App Store, ultimately hurting Apple and the conscientious developers who use subscriptions," he says.
Apple also buries subscription management
The issue of fraudulent apps may not always be the failure of the App Store review. It is possible that fraudulent applications sneak past the approval of Apple's Apple Review team, making them more difficult to catch.
But for now, users must make the decision to cancel these sneaky subscriptions.
Unfortunately, Apple does not facilitate user access to their subscriptions.
Compare Apple's design with Google Play, where the subscription management option is in the top-level navigation:
On the iPhone, it still takes several tapping and a little scrolling to reach the same area in the iOS settings:
Above: Getting subscriptions in the iPhone settings (click the images to enlarge)
In the App Store itself, you can navigate to subscriptions in less tapping, but the way you do it is not obvious. You first tap your profile icon at the top right of the home page, then your Apple ID, and scroll to the bottom of the page. It is still buried deeper than necessary, given the importance of managing these automatic payments.
"I firmly believe that this is not the future we should aspire to in terms of user experience," says Denys Zhadanov, Vice President of Readdle, manufacturer of Scanner Pro, Spark, PDF Expert and other applications. productivity, talking about these fraudulent apps. "Apple as a platform, as an ecosystem, has always been a symbol of trust. This means that people can count on them for their personal lives and their professional needs, "he continues.
"The App Store has always been a great place, supervised and organized by extremely intelligent and ethical people. I think the App Store can stay as it has always been, so the right steps are being taken to deal with the developers who are cheating the system, "adds Zhadanov.
Today, most subscription businesses that thrive on the App Store come from legitimate developers. But they know how fraudsters could easily ruin the market for everyone. If allowed to continue, these scams could create consumer mistrust of subscriptions in general.
In the worst case, consumers can even go so far as to avoid downloading applications for which subscriptions are offered as in-app purchases to protect themselves from scams.
For the moment, Apple relies heavily on reports from users and developers via reportaproblem.apple.com – a site that is probably unknown – already exists – to help them fight against fraudsters. We must do more.
In addition to facilitating access to your subscriptions, it also needs to better control the "Top Grossing" utilities and productivity applications – especially if the value of the service is questionable, and the 1-star reviews specifically address issues such as sneaky billing "or mention other subscription tips.
Apple has declined to comment on the case, but its developer guidelines clearly prohibit fraudulent subscriber behavior and insist that apps are clear in terms of pricing. In other words, Apple has reason to clear up these fraudulent subscription applications if it chooses to focus more on this problem in the future.
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