This really isn’t anything new, but lately, we’ve been seeing a lot more fake apps hitting the Play Store that are of well known apps. This happens because Android is open, and Google doesn’t review every single app that gets submitted to the Play Store like Apple does for their App Store. Many of you may remember that when BBM was supposed to launch, it was delayed because of all the fakes on the Play Store. There were about 30 or so BBM apps. And none of them were the actual BBM app.
Today, we’re seeing even more apps pop up on the Play Store that are fakes of other popular apps. These include Slideshare, SnapGuide, Wolfram Alpha, Fiverr, IFTTT, MySpace and many others. What’s worse, is that a lot of these apps are only on iOS, and there’s no Android version.
These are all from one developer actually, and the developer’s name is “Premium App”. So if you see any apps from this developer on the Play Store, please be sure to report them to Google so we can get them off of the Play Store. We don’t know if they are full of malware, viruses, or what. What’s even worse is that some of these apps are paid apps. So you’re paying for a fake app. So please be sure to submit complaints to Google Play to get these apps removed and this developer in general out of the Play Store. And I use the term “developer” loosely.
I really wish that Google was more proactive with this type of stuff. I mean we saw how quickly Google removed CyanogenMod’s Installer app. I expect them to work that quickly to get these fake apps out of the Play Store as well. Anyone else agree with me?
How many of you are tired of seeing fake apps plague the Google Play Store?