App Store Scam of the Week: ‘TabControl Extension’ for Safari
Jeff Johnson: These purported reviews, all but one of which is 5 stars, are all in English. Yet none of them is in the US App Store. I also looked at other English-speaking countries such as Australia and Canada but found no reviews. Also suspicious is that the name of every reviewer was a first name followed by an initial for the last name. If you’ve ever looked through App Store user reviews,…
According to Jeff Johnson, a developer of the Safari extension called 'TabControl Extension', the app's promotional reviews on the App Store appear suspicious. All but one of the reviews are five-star ratings and written in English, but they are not located in the United States where the App Store is located. Johnson also found no reviews from other English-speaking countries like Australia or Canada.
Another red flag is the reviewers' usernames, which follow a peculiar naming format of a first name followed by a single letter representing their last name. This is unusual on the App Store, where users typically create unique usernames without spaces and often add a number at the end.
Johnson's most conclusive evidence that these reviews are fake and generated by artificial intelligence is the date stamps on the reviews. The dates, such as "Mar 12," are earlier than the release date of 'TabControl Extension' in the App Store. The extension has become the 12th or 13th most popular Safari extension on the App Store, raising questions about the purpose behind this apparent AI-generated scam and the extent of the data it might be collecting from users' Safari tabs.
Written by urgent.news from Daring Fireball's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
