I'm amazed everything is in line w… | Apple Developer Forums

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Hello,

Apple sent an email today as I shared the content below.

"We are writing to inform you that your company is not in compliance with the Apple Developer Program License Agreement (PLA). Section 11.2 (Termination) states: (g) if You engage, or encourage others to engage, in any misleading, fraudulent, improper, unlawful or dishonest act relating to this Agreement, including, but not limited to, misrepresenting the nature of Your Application (e.g., hiding or trying to hide functionality from Apple's review, falsifying consumer reviews for Your Application, engaging in payment fraud, etc.). Be aware that manipulating App Store chart rankings, user reviews or search index may result in the loss of your developer program membership. Please address this issue promptly."

I couldn't make any sense. I have 3 applications in my account, which has been active for more than 1 year, and I have been trying to grow one of them by advertising for the last 4 months. Everything was going well and according to the rules.

Any ideas?

Developer Program

1.7k

Posted by

14Tech

Reply

Accepted Reply

Hi hbhbjhjhb

Your answer was very informative. Thanks a lot,

Revenuecat ? We don't use revenuecat, so I'm eliminating this option.
A nefarious competitor is attempting sabotage your apps by buying fake reviews. ? Yes, this may be the case, we may have drawn attention, that we were ahead of our competitors in a short time.

*An unusual spike in downloads may have triggered this. I will review this.

Phishing ?

To make sure of this, we contacted and tried to verify the email. The domain name looks correct (apple.com) But the support team said they don't have the information to confirm this. For this reason, they suggested that we continue communication via the same e-mail.

I think it is very valuable to share our experiences. We will continue to share information about the developments under this topic. Please inform us about your situation.

Good luck Thanks

Posted by

14Tech

Replies

Everything was going well and according to the rules.

That's your opinion, which is not shared by reviewer who gave details on the problems. Only you can know what is behind.

You can try to appeal, but chances of success are limited.

Posted by

Claude31

I have got the same email. Any updates from the ones who got this?

Thank you.

Posted by

justtryitout

I've also received the same email today. Please post any updates as will I

Thank you

—
hbhbjhjhb

We received the same email today.

Ideas/suspicions:

If you use RevenueCat, you know that they had a major two hour long outage on Friday February 10th. Any customers who made purchases during that period were unable to unlock content after paying. The issue was resolved, but any affected customers will need to manually Restore Purchases. Perhaps Apple's systems detected this as a form of "payment fraud".
A nefarious competitor is attempting sabotage your apps by buying fake reviews. Would be easy to detect if you notice an unusually high amount of new reviews for your apps. If so, disclose this to Apple immediately.
An unusual spike in downloads may have triggered this.

Other:

We investigated the email headers, and it looks like a legitimate email from Apple. But we can't be certain it's not phising, so do not share any sensitive information.

Besides the "Please address this issue promptly", there isn't much of a call to action. We reviewed our apps, analytics, reviews, etc and responded with our findings to show everything is in order. I'm not sure what going to happen next, but others have said Apple attempts to schedule a phone call to discuss the matter further.

In any case, I will update this thread as new information comes in. Please share updates here as well.

Thank you

Posted by

hbhbjhjhb

Thank you for your clear explanation.

Did you detect any suspicious changes in reviews/downloads/refund,... in your app? Mine has not changed in anything. I am going to reply to see what happens next.

—
justtryitout

Be aware that manipulating App Store chart rankings, user reviews or search index may result in the loss of your developer program membership. Please address this issue promptly."

Here is the hint.

Check the analytics of all your apps and see if there are any spikes in impressions and conversion rates on your apps. Check your ratings too.

It is most likely that one of your apps was targeted by a botnet.

In any case, something is off and Apple is prompting you to investigate the issue and you should take this seriously.

Best of luck

Posted by

matheymatei

Hi hbhbjhjhb

Your answer was very informative. Thanks a lot,

Revenuecat ? We don't use revenuecat, so I'm eliminating this option.
A nefarious competitor is attempting sabotage your apps by buying fake reviews. ? Yes, this may be the case, we may have drawn attention, that we were ahead of our competitors in a short time.

*An unusual spike in downloads may have triggered this. I will review this.

Phishing ?

To make sure of this, we contacted and tried to verify the email. The domain name looks correct (apple.com) But the support team said they don't have the information to confirm this. For this reason, they suggested that we continue communication via the same e-mail.

I think it is very valuable to share our experiences. We will continue to share information about the developments under this topic. Please inform us about your situation.

Good luck Thanks

Posted by

14Tech

We still have not received a response to the email we sent. Is there any improvement in your situation?

Posted by

14Tech

Nothing yet. I'll post something once we are updated.

—
hbhbjhjhb

we contacted and tried to verify the email

Beware, in my experience Apple Support cannot reliably distinguish between spam and emails sent by other parts of Apple.

Posted by

endecotp

Sender's domain is apple.com Can hackers send mail with this domain?

—
14Tech

We still have not received a response to the email we sent. Is there any improvement in your situation?

Nothing on our side either.

Posted by

hbhbjhjhb

Hello,

I found a way to confirm that the incoming mail came from Apple. In the link I shared, the header of the mail is analyzed and gives you information about this mail. I understood that the person who came to us really came from apple.

Header Analysis https://mha.azurewebsites.net/pages/mha.html

Howto getmail hader info ? https://mxtoolbox.com/public/content/emailheaders/

Posted by

14Tech

Update

We finally received a response.

They thanked us for taking a look and reporting our findings (we found no unusual data). They also said to continue monitoring our apps and report any abnormal data in the future quickly via "Sign in to App Store Connect account > Contact Us > Report a Concern > Report a Fraud Concern".

One last note I'll add is that they reiterated that manipulation of user reviews is against the PLA. I imagine this is what triggered the email for us, but I'm not sure why as we didn't find any abnormal rate of reviews. Anyhow, I recommend forwarding all App Store reviews to Slack/Telegram and keeping an eye on them.

Posted by

hbhbjhjhb

thanks

—
14Tech

I haven't looked in a long time, so I'm back late.

They gave us the same answer the same day.

We have already shared all the data we have. We also gave information about the source of the traffic. Apple sent another email today and said they wanted to talk to us on the phone. Waiting to hear what they have to say

Posted by

14Tech

Any update on this matter? I have the same case. did the app appear again in the app store search result?

Posted by

Bouine

latest situation,

We talked to the authorities on the phone and they told us that we should investigate the suspicious situation and they mentioned the date range that we should pay attention to. We focused on this date range and shared some of the data we suspected.

Posted by

14Tech

Can you share some pointers what you found in those date? Unusual no of downloads? Increase in fake reviews / negative review by your competitor or any one so? Did you do any A/B test on paywall? Anything else?

Posted by

evivz