- By Shlomy Aviram Posted on 9/5/2014
In any fast growing and competitive market there are pressures which can sometimes lead people to undertake controversial practices to gain an edge, or put simply, cheat to get ahead. The app promotion market is a prime example of these pressures in action.
Increasingly, bots that create fake click and install IDs have been deployed to boost apps "popularity". This is much more than simply mixing incentivized and non-incentivized traffic to grow volumes and lowers costs; it is clearly fraud.
It makes up one of a growing list of fraudulent practices that are infecting the app market but are seldom discussed. For example, in the case of Android, the open source code has been exploited to "steal" downloads.
By copying an Android app's open code and creating an APK file out of it, you can essentially "own" the whole code within the app including, crucially, the tracking code. This APK code can then be linked to a website to create a self-standing "app store", with real apps, detached from the real Google Play store. Fraudsters have recently taken this practice to the next level, now not only do they make money from downloads and in-app purchases, but also from hijacking the genuine marketing campaign for the app from an affiliate program.
betanews/ full article here/ http://betanews.com/2014/09/05/the-app-fraud-people-should-be-aware-of/