Does the android play store have bots?

S

Sly

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
5,749
Just tried a dog whistle app thieves after noon and uninstalled it now.

The app showed over a million downloads and 16000 5 stars ratings. However soon after I tried it, I noticed ads popping up on my notification bar. After a while I also noticed my gps was running. When I went to the battery menu, I noticed that the dog whistle app had eaten almost 20 percent of my power.

I can't believe people gave it 5 stars when it was gobbling up their batteries, ads in their notification screens and gps constantly running. 5 stars ratings for a spyware?
 
That's why when you click download there is a list of permissions.

A dog whistle would require none at all.
 
Yeah. I let my guard down and should have checked the specs, i'm looking into what kind of damage it's done. But i can't believe something that's so obviously spyware got this many positive reviews and so many downloads. On the other hand, similar apps with better layouts and functionality barely got a fraction of the overall score. Making me question if there are download bots artificially inflating the score of the malware apps to the top of the search list.

What alerted me was that the phone was very warm when i picked it up, how can something that's so obviously malware that you can even detect it on a physical level be one of the top programs?
 
Last edited:
Zurginator said:
That's why when you click download there is a list of permissions.

A dog whistle would require none at all.
Click to expand...

This made me lol. Yeah, a dog whistle app shouldn't require anything. Not sure if OP is troll or not...
 
zamardii said:
This made me lol. Yeah, a dog whistle app shouldn't require anything. Not sure if OP is troll or not...
Click to expand...

I'm serious. It does shake your faith in android when the top search result by a wide margin is a malware. Say what you will, but it's hard to downplay an apps perceived integrity when 75% of the reviews declare that an app can be trusted.
 
Sly said:
I'm serious. It does shake your faith in android when the top search result by a wide margin is a malware. Say what you will, but it's hard to downplay an apps perceived integrity when 75% of the reviews declare that an app can be trusted.
Click to expand...

Could also be your phone messing up. I know the Facebook app runs like shit on many phones but alright on others. So if there are more people with phones that the app runs good on and are willing to give it 5 stars...
 
Zurginator said:
That's why when you click download there is a list of permissions.

A dog whistle would require none at all.
Click to expand...

LBE Privacy Guard ftw. You can set which permissions to actually allow/deny after you install the app. Mandatory app afaic, with all the BS permissions developers are asking for.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top