In an interesting non-announcement, it seems that the applications that have caused such a stir today have now been removed from the iTunes Store. That is, the ones of which we are aware.
We’ve gotten no response from Apple, so there is no confirmation as to whether Apple itself has removed the applications, or if the developer has become aware of the publicity and decided to leave well enough alone.
To that end, keep an eye here on TNW. In the next few minutes, we’ll be reporting on some other rogue developers that we’ve uncovered. This might turn out to be a very interesting week for Apple.
In the mean time, make certain that you’re taking precautions against having your own account compromised.
Nice, but I expect there are more…
The whole problem is that even if they were to have scammed/hacked the system they wouldn’t get paid immediately from Apple. Apple doesn’t send you -any- money until “up to” 45 days after the end of the current month. Vaulting their apps into the top 100, 10, or even 5 will not give them a single dime. Egg on the face of Apple… sure, but I can’t figure out what they were trying to accomplish.
Maybe just show that it can be hacked…..
Maybe they were using the bigger apps to cover up another account that they’re sending smaller amounts of purchases but at a higher price to.
Hi, I am the developer of the currently #1 app in the travel category on the US iPad app store: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/road-trip-bingo-hd/id376477517?mt=8 . I had noticed that there was a band of over 20 apps with info about various travel destinations in China that were all very close in ranking and consistently in the top 25. All have all five star reviews with text reviews written in bad English. A link to their page on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/wiishii-network/id365242153 . Their website link does not return a suitable website as well.
When our app was just under them in the rankings, we were getting about 15 downloads a day. If this hacking story is true and these are one of the developers that do it, that gives you a data point on how many accounts they need to have hacked.
Their apps are still on the store as of this writing.