The world of applications and portable devices (smartphonesand tablets) has done nothing but grow up and get famous But with the success comes traps And, according to the New York Times, there are services that work to make an application more visible and end up in the featured group without actually being one of themA system that distorts the rankings of applications and that does harm to other developers, subtracting the value that their creations deserve, and to the users
Recently, in a forum about applications and games for the Apple operating system , a user and developer for this platform posted the deal offered to him by a company from to promote his creations. The developer tells how after looking for several legal but expensive methods he found said company. She was offering to promote her app to a position in the top 25 in exchange for $5,000
Intrigued by the system the company used to make applications more visible, decided to ask.The fraud resides in the creation of a software or program known generically as bots (robots), a system that automatically downloads the application, rating it also in a positive way In this way, the popularitypopularity and number of downloads of the application would only grow and rise to the first positions of the most demanded applications
Far from seeming something exclusive or misleading, the company guaranteedto the developer the agreed result explaining that, at that very moment, there were up to eight apps from his clients in the top 20 free downloads “I was totally surprised” writes the developer in the forum. So much so that he does not hesitate to publish all this information indicating the applications (games) and their respective positionswithin the list of the most downloaded.
However, the story does not end here. According to the developer, when deciding to consider the situation, the contact of the company that carries out this “big fraud” warned him that Apple was already on notice In fact, the company that carries out these unfair practices has lowered the price of its service due to the risk faced by developers of losing its development license for Apple Something that the apple company has already made known to the creators of applications through a message on its web page
But, as commented some developers in the New York Times, these measures are ineffective, requiring a reform of the application market Above all because the one who loses out is the user himself, who, guided by false evaluations, “does not download popular applications, but those whose developers have managed to trick the download rankings”
