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

Same here - all my apps got unexpected downloads from china without any interaction.

First time i had this issue in june i think where one of my app got this downloads (and i was suprised as it was a Christmas Game which gets many downloads in Summer 😀).

So i started to contact apple - first they didnt believed me that and said the same regarding the volume purchase programm.
But i think now they are wondering too.

So Apple said "please send me full screenshot of the report and the name of the apps".
Thats what i did today - i didnt noticed before that they all came from China until today.

I hope Apple get rid of it - i started reporting this some weeks ago.
And it really ***** if the numbers aren't correct. This is then totally useless stats...."oh my app has 1 million downloads but 900k are useless" ....:

What i am really wondering : what is the reason ? i mean if this is a bot network or something downloading and install apps - what the **** is the benefit of it ?

Since Apple denies there is a problem I had to yank the app from the Chinese App Store.

I too am curious why this occurs, and how they do it. The App Store must have been hacked in some fashion. But to what end?

The sad part is the app might had some legitimate users in China.

out of the many theories behind this, the one that I believe the most is that some chinese agents are creating lots of fake accounts to download apps to rate some app, in order to do this, they pretend to be legitimate users by downloading other apps randomly.

A week has passed, but I didn't get *any* reply from Apple to my bug report regarding the problem 😟

I also opted for pulling the apps out of the Chinese market.

Hopefully this will be addressed soon enough.

This would make sense actualy. I created a Facebook ad for my app a while back and set it to worldwide. By the end of one day I had over 200 likes...mostly from Bangladesh and other such countries. These Facebook users appeared to be legit people, but after researching I discovered that people can pay for Likes and these bots or people will click Like on everything they see to make them look legit. I removed all 200 of those fake likes.

So if this is the case for the App Store I hope Apple can track down the culprits and put a stop to it. There is obviously a reason for this increase in fake downloads and Japps reason seems to be the most reasonable.

Oh, and I turned off China and all the downloads from China has stopped. So the app doesn't appear to have been hacked and posted in other places besides the Apple App store, but then who knows for certain at this point.

Same thing here: more than 100 downloads a day on two apps since mid August, but no surge of AdMob activity...

There was even a spike to 250 downloads a day around August 25th!

I'm seeing the same thing. I have two free games on the app store with admob ads. I originally saw a small spike in Chinese downloads over the holidays (December/January) in one of my free apps. It was about 20-25 downloads per day with no associated increase in ad revenue or interaction. This was somewhat consistent until June when the downloads suddenly stopped. On August 17th the Chinese downloads began again (about 50-75 per day) and have continued since. It's only happening on one of my games.

I also manage a suite of educational games that I produced for a University a few years back. I checked their stats yesterday, and saw the same thing - a spike in downloads from China.

I know I'm just parroting what others are saying, but I wanted to report this in the hopes that someone from Apple is monitoring this thread and looking for data.

Hi folks,

I'm working for a French cultural institution (the Centre des monuments nationaux) and we develop different apps that are used for bringing contents when visiting monuments. We usually have a small amounts of download per day / app (about 10-15) and since mid-August, we have a huge increase, as you are all experiencing, of download coming from China (400-500 per day/app) with 7 of our 12 apps and absolutely no activity whatsoever coming from theses downloads. Besides the analytics problem (it renders all download numbers fake, so we have to ignore the chinese downloads) it seems to have no other impact.

I have been investigating the subject during the last month, since chinese downloads have been going on with no interruption since August 15th. So far here is the extent of what I know / read / observe :

- This is a worldwide phenomenon, it doesn't seem to be limited to specific countries or activities

- Almost all of our chinese downloads (99,99%), according to iTunes Connect Analytics, have been done with iOS 10.2, which is rather strange > @all : do you make the same observation ? Maybe a vulnerability has been found in this iOS version that is used through the downloads of apps?

- When I have asked Apple about it, their first answer was "it might be coming from the volume purchase program" (same as one other developper from this page). However when I have sent them our stats and reports, showing it was not related, their answer changed to "we are investigating and will let you know" (since September 7th). I'm thinking they are trying to understand the problem too.

- The idea of having this phenomenon linked with the keywords in order to increase the ranking of others apps is interesting, but considering the extent of the phenomenon, it would be quite strange, no? Just so that you know, for our 7 apps our main keywords are (in french, related to cultural heritage) : monuments, CMN, Abbaye, famille, château, centre des monuments nationaux, Jardin, Château, Menhir, application, production, mobile. Anyone finds a pattern?

I am wondering, considering the fact that the downloads come mainly from iOS 10.2, that a vulnerability has been found in that version of iOS, and that someone uses it to cover another connexion behind (VPN access or else?). It is far etched though but I don't really have any other theory. It's not related to competition (can't say we really have any in our field).

Any other guess anyone?

Best,

David

Hi David,

Yes, all odd downloads are with 10.2 in our case too. I doubt that that is a coincidence.

Are your apps using adverts like AdMob? I have a conspiracy theory that someone is hijacking apps with adverts and then converting the impressions somehow to their account. Some of the comments above mention the use of AdMob in the apps as well. In our case, after every update of apps we can see 1 immediate download from China, as if someone is checking something but then no abnormal increase. Then as soon as AdMob was introduced, from day 2 the odd downloads start.

Best,

Uwe

Hi Uwe,

No we don't have ads in our apps, so I think the reason is elsewhere. Interesting to see that iOS 10.2 seems to be a common factor (on iPhone by the way, no fake-chinese users have downloaded the apps on iPad).

I have forwarded this information to Apple, we'll see what they say (if they say anything).

I have tried to see if anything specific happened after updating our apps, but we don't really have a change in the pattern. When I look for instance at our app "Azay-le-Rideau" (which is free and only in French), during the last 30 days I have :

• 1 download from the US
• 1 download from Belgium
• 2 downloads from Spain
• 43 downloads from France
• 1799 downloads from China (more than 97% of downloads...)

But only 409 users displaying my app in the app store in the same period. So it means they probably download the app through a way that is not "marked" as viewing the app in the app store.

The mystery thickens...

Best,

David

Hi David,

thanks for clarification, there goes my theory ;-) (better that way).

All our downloads are also on iPhones and correspond in App Analytics - Source - Source Type: App Units to App Store Browse instead of App Store Search. That is interesting, as our app "SOSglasses" has never been featured in China and last time it got into the utilities top ranks in China was end 2015.

Our Impressions and Product Page View stats are unchanged over time, i.e. do not correspond to the China download spike. Of course, if none of the China download 'users' would opt-in to share their usage data, then we would not see an impact on installations, sessions, active devices and crashes - according to the App Analytics help. Due to the number of downloads, I can see that our opt-in rate has dropped from around 16% to 0%.

As you have to release certain functions in our app through watching a reward video, I would however detect activity 'if all is normal', even though the China devices have opted out. I do not see any ad impression from China and therefore have to assume that these downloads have a different purpose.

Intriguing 🙂

Best,

Uwe

Hi Uwe,

Same thing here: all chinese downloads come from iOS version 10.2 and have been accessed via browsing through the appstore ; and of course our app is not translated in chinese. I'm pretty sure there is no activity in the concerned apps whatsoever.

Since our apps are all so different and mostly for us, useless for Chinese people since it's in French, let's consider it has nothing to do with the apps itself. The reasons I could see could be:

- Downloading in order to have fake accounts look real

- Hiding something behind the download (VPN connection or an attack through a security flaw of iOS 10.2)

- Modify the ranking of some apps or keywords ; however the wide range of apps concerned seems to eliminate this theory

- A buggy click-farm that is ruled by a buggy robot 🙂

Anyway, I doubt we will know the answer until Apple finds out what it is...

Best,

David

I doubt Apple do care. I file a bug on the issue a month ago and haven't seen anything from them. Not even "your bug report is a duplicate of another issue" as they usually reply. I just removed my apps from Chinese App Store for now.

Same here. Some observations to add. I have one App that is for iPad only and that seems not part of this. They do not download that one. Also I changed the price of one of my other Apps from free to level 1 for one week. During that week the downloads stopped and started again after that week.

My thoughts: this is somebody, some company (or bigger) using automated bots to use all bandwith to the AppStore servers. That way they make downloading for regular Chinese users almost impossible and using Apps from the Appstore is difficult for them. Now I ask you: who has the biggest benefit to do this?