As you know, we always warn our readers that if they are about to install apps from unknown developers, checking out the comments section will give them clues about the legitimacy of these apps. Eleftheriou says that the illegal movie streaming apps garnered negative reviews that proved that they were illegal. To promote the illegal apps, social media influencers with “millions” of followers were used.
Kosta Eleftheriou’s FlickType keyboard can be found inside the App Store
The developer noted that “While Apple is failing to police its App Store, these (illegal movie streaming) apps have amassed over 2M downloads and are now generating ~16,000/day or about $6M per year.” And Apple’s cut amounts to a pretty decent chunk of change. Even Apple’s own Eric Friedman, head of the Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk [FEAR] unit, had nothing positive to say about App Store security calling it akin to “bringing a plastic knife to a gunfight.”
Friedman (no relation to this writer) also stated that the App Store review process is “more like the pretty lady who greets you… at the Hawaiian airport than the drug-sniffing dog.” Go through the streaming movie apps on your iPhone and check out the comments section in the App Store for all of them. If there are red flags for any of these apps, make sure that you uninstall those immediately.
