app with installs but no interactions. (China fake installs)

Let's say a user has 4 devices, but only uses the app on one of them...that's 4 installs and one session.

But since it's a game, I'd say the odds are it's been jailbrk'd/pirated where only installs are being reported.

I have had the same thing happen. I have more than a dozen Apps in the Store, some 9 or 10 years old that are Free and don't get much action any more.

At the end of May there was a sudden surge in downloads from China with all of my Free Apps. This has continued daily now for a couple months. The volume isn't huge it stays around a few dozen downloads per day but it has been steady every day.

The odd thing is that there have been no Sessions in Analytics - none. So in Analytics I see a few hundred installs but no Sessions.

The obvious guess is that they all have Opt-In turned off or maybe it is disabled in China.

Here is what I know...After updating my only app I have in June I all of a sudden started getting downloads from China. Everyday I get a few downloads from the China area, but as you guys pointed out, there are no sessions and my Unity ads and analytics shows no action in China.

At first I was excited and went and hired a translator to translate the meta data and in-game rules to Simplified Chinese. My translator was very helpful in giving me insights. When I finally noticed that these downloads showed no signs of action I asked my translator to test the ads for me. He said the Unity ads worked fine and showed Chinese ads. After submitting the new meta data and translations there has been basically no signs of life from China, except for my translator, his small activity showed up.

Why is this? There is a thread started in the Distribution/App Analytics forum titled “Surge of downloads from China - no active devices” that addresses the same issue, but no one knows why.

What do we know?

1. This starts all of a sudden. With mine it started right after I posted a new update to TestFlight. The update wasn't even live on the app store yet, but downloads from China for the older app greatly increased.
2. There is no signs of use from these app downloads.

Questions...

Could this be the work of competitors and bots? Do installs without any use hurt an apps rank? Like if you have 5000 downloads but only 50 people using it does this affect your rank?

Is there a underground app market that people are getting our apps and then cracking them? My app is free but has IAPs. Why do these downloads show up in Apple Sales and Trends?

Is someone in China making the money off our apps?

Conclusion...

I am going to perform an experiment and increase the price of my app to 99 cents and see if the downloads continue. It would be neat if they did.

Surely someone has some insights to this phenomenon.

>Is there a underground app market that people are getting our apps and then cracking them?

See my original reply above. But know it's not underground...it's out in the open for anyone that cares to spend 10 seconds w/google. They're cracked and put up on sites as bait to attract eyeballs where the site owners earn their revenue off ads. Generally any game out there will be a target.

Kailric, good idea, please inform us the result of your experiment when you do it.

I'll plan a price increase in China just to see what happens there and let you guys know how that goes.

I am not overly concerend with it at the moment. We are working on multiplayer, and when that is done, I wonder how that will effect these China installs. Like will the hacked installers use multiplayer? How will it work if they do? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

On an interesting note, the app was updated this week and we added a promotional video. Installs (hacked ones) in China increased by 600% this week. What ever service they are using to get the app it must keep up with apps being updated as each time there is an update the installs increase.

Anyway, I'm off for now.

Same thing here. Two free apps chugging along with very low downloads for a couple of years. Spurts in downloads after presentations to Rotary club, environment class, etc. (relevant to the apps). 3 days ago, major downloads of these two apps to China. Another app is priced at $10 and didn't see a surge, a fourth is really a demo -- total downloads is about 4 (lifetime). We've had a handful of other downloads from China over time but this is new.

Maybe it is legit -- is someone using free apps to load iPhones or iPhone clones?

Can anyone explain or let us know if we should worry?

In looking at previous posts, it is true that this surge started right after a new app was approved for the App Store. That app is approved but waiting for us to release it -- is the queue of approved and unreleased apps visible? Is that what's hacked? Maybe it's a way to load up iPhones (or clones) with "the latest" apps? Worried about that, because this unreleased app isn't free.

If it's true that hundreds of people will be interested in an app to manage nonprofit/NGO risk, that would be wonderful new for us (and the nonprofit world). I think that's probably not the explanation.

Hi, I am having the same issue. A huge spike in downloads from China... Upwards of close to 100 downloads per day. This only started happening after my update to the app store (we updated on June 6, 2017). This past week Aug 14-21 2017, we had a 1200% increase in downloads from China.

Anyone have any updates on a potential solution? Thinking about contacting apple so we don't get docked on our acct for app store manipulation.

I noticed the same thing on some of my apps. So I did some digging and research on the subject. Analytics inside China is f*cked up. Entire China is behind their great firewall and most western services are not available outside of China. For example I'm using Firebase for one of my apps and Googles Services are not available in China. So I don't see anything inside their analytics.

So chances are nothing is going to show up in analytics. Since it is all happening behind the great firewall of China. Which is just a very convenient tool to have their internal market flourishing and keep us out of that market.

Same issue here. Since August 17th I have noticed a surge in downloads of our free apps from China. No activity reported on the Analytics (opt-in sessions).

Some started on the same date, while others one week later. No changes in our pay-apps (which remain low...).

Hope this issue will be addressed by Apple sooner than later.

same here up 416% in downloads in China

Well, when I first saw the downloads increase I got all excited and hired a translator to translate the meta data to Chinese. My translator was in China and he downloaded the app and even watched some ads. His activity showed up on my analytics, but the hundreds of others do not. So that could mean that its not the firewall that is keeping us in the dark but perhaps some underground appstores as another felllow mentioned.

+1

Seeing huge spikes from China for my free apps, but no page views or session activity.

Such a tease.

UPDATE: Since these are obviously bogus downloads, I've removed one of my apps from sale in China as a test. Will report back...

How would downloads from an "underground appstore" show up as downloads in Apple's own App Store analytics?

My analytics show the download "source" as the App Store.

Thought: I wonder if removing the apps from China would have any affect? (Obviously these are bogus downloads, one way or another)

Hi I'm a Chinese app developer having the same issue here.

I have one free app and it has now 44~120 installs per day from China, before there was only 1 or 2.

After some searching, I found someone answering

from this website: https://www.zhihu.com/question/57233991 (Zhihu)

One of the answers said this is someone using bots to install apps to increase the ranking of related keywords in App Store search.

The other one said it could be your competitor maliciously did this to let Apple think it is you who is doing it so that your app would be forced to shut down.

So far no solution to this.

It looks to me the first answer may be right since my app has only at most 100 users which should be not threat to anybody...

Good luck!

Thanks, jpdev001

Please do report back. I plan to do similar tests but just haven't got around to it yet. Yesterday we had 127 downloads from China, but no activity shown. That really hurts the potential revenue from ads that these downloads would generate. It is a free app, so why would it need to be sold underground anyway? Looking back, since last October, my Unity analytics shows only 5 new users from China. However, the App Store shows over 1000 downloads from China. Very frustrating.

Could they be downloading but unable to start the app? That doesn't make sense either as my translator could download it just fine. He even discovered a bug for me.

Edit: When I look at iTunes Connect analytics from China it shows 0 installs. The mass of installs only shows on Sales and Trends. So why is this a discrepancy?

Same here too.

A game I released almost exactly a year ago had very few downloads. Over the last two months I have seen a slight increase in downloads, 1 or 2, maybe up to 5 per day, all from China.

All of a sudden in the last week I have seen 50, 80, and yesterday it peaked at 123 downloads.

I should also mention, this is a free game, with AdMob adverts. There is an occasional single unit of a USA download mixed in - but mostly ALL from China.

Either the people who download the game aren't actually playing it at all (not one single ad show in China) or AdMob just doesn't work in China ???

Not only that but the opt in analytics shows very little plays.

Either way - I've had about 500 downloads in the last week compared to ~300 in the entire previous year.

There is an IAP to upgrade the game and remove ads, needless to say, not one single user has paid.

A very strange situation. I wish I knew what was driving the Chinese downloads but I can't find anything pointing to my game ?!

Also iTunes Connect seems to say they are coming from store browsing ?!

curiouser and curiouser ...

I was also thinking of trying the 'make it paid' experiment.. but I am 99% sure that would immediately kill all downloads !

What is worse ? zero downloads of a paid app or hundreds of downloads of a free app that no one seems to actually play ?

I have had the same issue with a sticker pack that I created, I started to have an increased amount of downloads on August 17th, but being that it is stickers I didnt really want to pay for a website so I just created a facebook account to allow for social interaction of the stickers, I have noticed that from facebook I am getting views of the facebook sticker page, which leads me to believe that the free app has possibly been downloaded.

I don't believe these are real users/downloads.Why? I have a 400-800% increase in downloads, yet zero to few page impressions or app activity. It smells like an iTunes Connect or App Store foul-up to me.

Since all these China "downloads" generate exactly $0 (from my in-app purchase), I have no problems temporarily removing it from the store. This B.S. is really reaking havok on my metrics! 😠

Update:

Just realized that a couple of my apps are Apple TV 4 only, so obviously these are phony downloads since Apple TV is not sold in China!

Waiting to see if removing all apps from China will solve the issue...

Hello, same here too. A week ago my free app starts growing dowloading from China. Someone has change the price app in other to test if dowdloads stops from China. Any recommendations?

Update: After removing all apps from the China App Store, downloads appear to be leveling off to previous volumes.

Again, no signs any real users from China were actually downloading/using these apps. Some sort of hacking with the App Store system going on I'd guess....

I've removed my app from sale in China for the past day and a half and its still getting downloads. Yesterday it was 63. It is strange that the numbers very from day to day. Anyway, I will keep looking at it to see if it decreases to 0. Perhaps it takes a while for the data to flush out of the system.

I can confirm that disabling China from the list of approved territories stops the downloads. We were seeing thousands of downloads from China across our suite of apps, which was skewing our metrics. We believed the downloads to be bots and feared the potential ASO penalties that come as a result. It took a while, but we went through and disabled China for over 90 apps. If you do disable China, give it 48 hours to really set in.

I've disable China as well and we'll see if the downloads stop.

What exactly is the ASO penalties in which you speak of?

What would be the motive for people getting bots to download our apps? Would it be a competitor and this somehow gives them an advantage?

Can we get these fake downloads removed?