Apple Cracks Down on Fake App Store Reviews

Apple is reportedly taking action against fake app store reviews, a recent problem the company has faced as developers hire people to spam positive ratings, boosting the apps popularity on the charts. TechCrunch reports that Apple has been removing these reviews for some time now.

For some period of time — it’s unclear exactly how long — Apple has been removing fake reviews from the App Store that have unjustly helped certain apps climb higher in the charts than they would have otherwise.

For instance, an app by the name of Better Fonts Free once had 20,000 reviews, however it has now seen all of its June reviews disappear to just 4,000. Developers have no way to remove the reviews, so it is likely Apple had removed the fake reviews.


Apple did step in to remove this app’s ratings due to attempts by the developer to game the system. What’s more, this is not the first time the company has done this, we now understand. In fact, any time Apple finds credible evidence of ratings fraud or manipulation, it can and “often” does take action to remove the ratings associated with that activity.

This is great news for developers who play by the rules and asking real users to rate their own apps. There are still apps out there with fake ratings, but we hope Apple continues to crack down on those developers. This is yet another step Apple is making to clean up the app store, presumably before the iOS 8 launch. Earlier this week it was noted that Apple was removing music-downloading apps as well as apps Apps that incentivize ad watching.

In iOS 8, Apple announced welcomed changes the app store which will feature a better search, an Explore feature, App bundles, and more.

via TechCrunch