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

Same with me...my app is free, so I don't understand what would be the motive...but the downloads from China started on August 24th out of the blue, and stopped abruptly, last downloads were on September 30th.

Glad to know I am not crazy either, but would love to get answers at some point.

I'd glad I came back to check this thread. I am going to turn China back on as I had them turned off and will let you know how it comes from there.

Weird, all the chinese downloads stopped 2 or 3 days ago. We're back to normal now.

What about you guys? Still having the issue?

Well, I had turned China off but restarted them on the 5th. The downloads started again the next day, howbeit, with much smaller numbers with 4 and then 3. However, just as before, there is no activity or installs from these downloads at all. Not even with my Unity analytics. The downloads are using iOS version 10.3. Someone mentioned 10.2 was being used before and I noticed that version used on most of my downloads as well. Perhaps they have found a venerability in 10.3 now?!?

Thanks for the news about the stop to fake downloads from China. I will open again some of our free apps for the Chinese market, although I doubt there will be any download given that the apps are mostly in French and a few in English or Italian.

It would be good though if Apple could delete this downloads from the stats (or at leats give us an option to do so).

and fake downloads back this week-end 😟 50% of dl on saturday, 65% on sunday

Hi,

I had a same experience with China from mid August - only free apps downloaded with rate 200-400 apps per day (before 10-20 per month). I removed China from downloads after 1 month because I didn’t trust it. I’m also wondering if this has something to do with Chinees legal requirements…..in the “App review Information” there is a section “Notes” with text:

Chinese law now requires online games to secure an approval number from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television. You can enter your game’s approval number and date below. To learn more, view the full text of the regulations(link to the Chinees website: http://www.sapprft.gov.cn/sapprft/contents/6588/298011.shtml

any news on this?

This is a technique used by malicious developers to kill your app. The installs kill your apps' retention values etc and make it rank lower for the keyword used to get the install. I do not know this for fact as there is no way to prove it, but my chess app has been ruined by such spikes eg 2 days ago 11000 downloads from Vietnam when I usually get a few hundred. Apple do seem really interested in investigating. Hopoefully they will remove the bogus units from my stats

I just got targetted in South Africa. Last week it was Vietnam.