awareness: expensive impersonation app on Google Play
Opened this issue ยท 1 comments
I'm opening a dedicated tracking issue for the absurdly expensive clone on Google play, first reported in #35 .
We closed #35 after Peter published our own, free version (:tada:), but I believe we should keep an eye on the clone in this dedicated issue, at the very least so that other people know that we're aware of the problem (closed issues aren't great for that).
- our official version: ๐ฅ com.nicobrailo.pianoli.gplay ๐ฅ
- Free
- officially published by @pserwylo, who is an active contributor/maintainer of this repo
- scammy, bad clone: ๐ ๐
com.nicobrailo.pianoliKelsey๐ ๐- absurdly expensive (โฌ79,99 at time of writing)
- impersonates @nicolasbrailo's app ID, only adding a "Kelsey" as change
What can we/you do
- Leave a one-star review on the clone-app, with a description pointing at our correct one
- Leave a 4-5 star review on our official version
- install our official version, so Google's popularity-ranking sorts it in front of the scam version
- Report the clone-App for "impersonation" (a violation of the Google Developer Policy)
- @nicolasbrailo has not given permission to "Kelsey Marie Bigler" to use
com.nicolasbrailo
in the app-id
- @nicolasbrailo has not given permission to "Kelsey Marie Bigler" to use
Oh, nice, I think the clone app is discounted, used to be 100+ I believe!
Thanks for the summary @juleskers. I don't think you can leave a bad review on the clone app without buying it, and please don't buy an expensive app just to leave a bad review.
I've been checking, and what this other app does is not against the terms of service of Google, nor against the open source license of this app. It doesn't claim any kind of endorsement or affiliation from us, and it doesn't use any trademarked name or logo. I don't think having my name in the app id changes much, it may be a fairly unique combination but I'm not famous enough for anyone to care :)
The clone app is very much against the "spirit" of open source, but not against the "letter". The only thing I hope is that the 10+ people who bought this app claimed their refund, and that they won't blame me for it!