Almost unbelievable that they allow this - except of course they do, because scamware makes a ton of money via in-app purchase, and Apple gets 30%, so of course they do. I'm sure people will come out of the woodwork now to white knight for Apple and spin this somehow. But anything that offends their business model can be removed in minutes, while software that by its title violates the App Store rules is just here indefinitely.

I'm pretty sure that one made it through the review for some reason, you don't typically see these apps in the App Store.

Funnily enough that's given as an example of a prohibited type of app in their review guidelines.

@PlatoIsADisease (because dead comments can't be replied): the term WalledGarden has been a term for this and related concepts since long before marketing-speak had completed the takeover of the internet.

But it's rated 4.4 stars! I'm guessing it hoovers your contacts and tries to get you to sign up for the IAP subscription.

The meta these days is bundling dodgy SDKs which turn the device into a residential proxy, which then gets sold on to the highest bidder. Mostly AI companies, whose desire to scrape literally everything has driven demand for that type of malware into the stratosphere.

Surely that doesn’t work very well on iOS devices unless you’re actively holding the location api open or something, which would be noisy.

Curated App Store, they said. Might have been true in 2010