Amazon just got Fakespot booted off Apple’s iOS App Store

Fakespot, known for its web browser extensions that try to weed out fake product reviews, suddenly no longer has an iPhone or iPad app — because Amazon sent Apple a takedown request, both Amazon and Fakespot confirm, and Apple decided to remove the app.

The giant retailer says it was concerned about how a new update to the Fakespot app was “wrapping” its website without permission, and how that could be theoretically exploited to steal Amazon customer data. But Fakespot founder Saoud Khalifah tells The Verge that Apple abruptly removed the app today without any explanation. Apple didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

The new Fakespot app launched just over a month ago on June 3rd, and I can confirm it let you log into Amazon, browse and buy items with Fakespot’s overlay on top — I downloaded and tried it a few weeks ago to see if it could help spot fake reviews on some new purchases, but didn’t come to a conclusion on whether it actually helped.

But in mid-June, says Fakespot’s founder, Amazon initiated a takedown notice, and just hours ago, Apple finally delivered a blunt three-line email about how it regretted that the situation couldn’t be resolved amicably and that Fakespot has now been removed from the App Store. “Apple hasn’t even given us the ability to solve this,” says Khalifah. “We just dedicated months of resources and time and money into this app.”

Amazon tells us it believes Fakespot violated Apple guideline 5.2.2, which reads:

5.2.2 Third-Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third-party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Authorization must be provided upon request.

Amazon also tells us that Fakespot injects code into its website, opening up an attack vector and putting customer data (including email, addresses, credit card info, and your browser history) at risk, though it says it doesn’t actually know if Fakespot is using this information.

“The app in question provides customers with misleading information about our sellers and their products, harms our sellers’ businesses, and creates potential security risks. We appreciate Apple’s review of this app against its Appstore guidelines,” reads a statement from Amazon.

But while Fakespot admits the app injects code to display its own scores, he categorically denies there’s any vulnerability, and points out that apps which include a web browser view are common — including coupon apps that Amazon seems to “have no problem with wrapping around a webview browser.”

Regardless of why, it’s a blow to one of the major outspoken critics of Amazon’s review system, as Fakespot is regularly cited in reports about review fraud on Amazon. Amazon even bought search ads against the “Fakespot” keyword in the App Store to reduce the app’s potential impact:

“Amazon is willing to bully little companies like ours that showcase the cracks in their company,” Khalifah says, suggesting Amazon must have realized people were choosing their app over the Amazon app. He says Fakespot racked up 150,000 installs from the iOS App Store, without spending any money on marketing.

Amazon says it regularly audits companies that try to call out fake reviews, and claims that Fakespot’s ratings are mostly wrong. “We regularly review products where Fakespot rated a product’s reviews as untrustworthy and their findings were wrong more than 80% of the time. They simply do not have the information we have—such as reviewer, seller and product history—to accurately determine the authenticity of a review.” Amazon suggests that it does a much better job of finding fake reviews itself by analyzing 30 million of them each week, though that clearly hasn’t stopped the fake and incentivized review problems yet — something we’re still investigating at The Verge.

Amazon wouldn’t say if it’s contacted Google about the Android version of the app, but that app hasn’t been updated since 2019.