{"id":6259,"date":"2013-08-05T01:54:26","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T09:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6259"},"modified":"2013-08-05T02:26:56","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T10:26:56","slug":"google-play-store-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6259","title":{"rendered":"Google Play Store Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before installing an app from <a href=\"https:\/\/play.gooogle.com\/\">the Google Play Store<\/a>, if you do not otherwise have familiarity with the app's developer, look at the time-stamp listed for the latest version.  If this version is only a day-or-so old, then look at the time-stamps for the app reviews.  If all of these are only from the previous day-or-so, then wait a couple of days before installing the app.<\/p> <p>I discovered that scam-ware is being posted to <a href=\"https:\/\/play.gooogle.com\/\">the Play Store<\/a>, sometimes with <em>thousands<\/em> of shill down-loads and shill reviews, to give to it the appearance of legitimacy.  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gooogle.com\/\">Google<\/a> acts to remove this scam-ware, but it takes them some time to catch up to it.<\/p> <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"center\" \/> <p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/play.gooogle.com\/\">Play Store<\/a> review system is unfortunately very easily manipulated, and some developers are doing just that even for apps that are not themselves intended as scam-ware. Hundreds or thousands of shill reviews are posted over time. (These reviews are typically short, and sometimes absurd, as when a utility is said to be a great game.) Negative reviews are marked as <q>Unhelpful<\/q> by shills, and positive previews perhaps as <q>Helpful<\/q>; which, since <a href=\"https:\/\/play.gooogle.com\/\">the Play Store<\/a> normally presents reviews ordered by <q>Helpful<\/q>-ness, means that negative reviews slide out of sight.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before installing an app from the Google Play Store, if you do not otherwise have familiarity with the app's developer, look at the time-stamp listed for the latest version. If this version is only a day-or-so old, then look at the time-stamps for the app reviews. If all of these are only from the previous [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36,69],"tags":[1191,1196,35,1192,1195,1194,1193,744],"class_list":["post-6259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-information-technology","tag-android","tag-computer-security","tag-google","tag-google-play-store","tag-information-technology-security","tag-it-security","tag-play-store","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}