Fake streaming apps on iOS swindle two million users

These apps fool people into thinking they are legitimate services

Apple's app store has a new headache; fake movie streaming apps that show users pirated films, and ask them to spend money.

App developer Kosta Eleftheriou made the revelation after he discovered a number of apps on the store that pretend to be legitimate services to lure people in.

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According to Eleftheriou, these apps have already amassed two million downloads worldwide and generated a lot of revenue. These apps have both paid and free versions, which of course means there are going to be a lot of intrusive ads. These ads are meant to drive users to the premium monthly subscriptions, which are processed through Apple's payments service.

Not only are these apps illegal, Apple seems to do nothing about them until called out.

This holiday season, why not watch some pirated movies from the App Store?

This app pretends to help you “discover classic old movie trailers”, but once you enter “777” in its search field, you can watch all the latest movies for FREE! https://t.co/BlEQmNEqg0pic.twitter.com/FUDadZNkTI — Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) December 22, 2021

In a separate tweet, Eleftheriou acknowledged that Apple took the app down thirty minutes after the tweet was live. But this is just one app among countless others.

Worse, these apps thrive on viral marketing campaigns on social media, including paying influencers with a number of followers to promote them to users.

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“While Apple is failing to police its App Store, these apps have amassed over 2M downloads and are now generating ~$16,000/day, or about $6M per year. Of course, Apple takes their 15-30% cut from all this, while @Netflix & others lose out,” wrote Eleftheriou.