#FailedState #Fake #MassSurveillance
#LeaveHomeSafe App Download Rate Surges; Top Downloads in Pacific and Caribbean Islands Causes Suspicion on Possible Scam Downloads
The Hong Kong government announced a more relaxed social distance measure in Hong Kong on February 18, 2021 and allowed dinner dine-in until 10pm where 4 customers can share a table.
However, for those dining-in, there is a requirement to scan a QR code with the government's āLeaveHomeSafeā app which authorities use for contact tracing or to provide personal information to the restaurant.
Rhe app has triggered worries over surveillance and privacy in the city. According to the government, there is, however, a surge in the number of downloads for the āLeaveHomeSafeā app.
The government reported an "overwhelming response" from the public, with over 2.3 million downloads. But data from an app analysis website shows that the Android app has the most downloads in the Health category in many countries outside of Hong Kong and Macau.
Most of which are from the Pacific and Caribbean island countries. This raises some suspicion and the situation suggests that some might have turned to individual companies for help in ātampering with the numbersā, or āpaid listing boostā which are prevalent in China, to create the illusion of high download rates.
As for App Store Optimization (#ASO) services, netizen and travel writer Pazu Kong (čÆä¼Æä¼Æ) mentioned that in China that āit only takes a couple of cents for a machine to do this, and a few bucks for a person. One person can operate more than 100 SIM cards and more than 100 smartphones to artificially build up junk download rates to boost their rankings, increase visitation volume, and give 5-star ratings. Usually, if it was done by humans, it will be less likely to be noticed.ā
One of the ASO companies quoted the price stating that purchasing 500 downloads from Google Play cost just a bit over HK$100.
Source: Stand News #Feb22
#Clickrate #FakeDownloads
#LeaveHomeSafe App Download Rate Surges; Top Downloads in Pacific and Caribbean Islands Causes Suspicion on Possible Scam Downloads
The Hong Kong government announced a more relaxed social distance measure in Hong Kong on February 18, 2021 and allowed dinner dine-in until 10pm where 4 customers can share a table.
However, for those dining-in, there is a requirement to scan a QR code with the government's āLeaveHomeSafeā app which authorities use for contact tracing or to provide personal information to the restaurant.
Rhe app has triggered worries over surveillance and privacy in the city. According to the government, there is, however, a surge in the number of downloads for the āLeaveHomeSafeā app.
The government reported an "overwhelming response" from the public, with over 2.3 million downloads. But data from an app analysis website shows that the Android app has the most downloads in the Health category in many countries outside of Hong Kong and Macau.
Most of which are from the Pacific and Caribbean island countries. This raises some suspicion and the situation suggests that some might have turned to individual companies for help in ātampering with the numbersā, or āpaid listing boostā which are prevalent in China, to create the illusion of high download rates.
As for App Store Optimization (#ASO) services, netizen and travel writer Pazu Kong (čÆä¼Æä¼Æ) mentioned that in China that āit only takes a couple of cents for a machine to do this, and a few bucks for a person. One person can operate more than 100 SIM cards and more than 100 smartphones to artificially build up junk download rates to boost their rankings, increase visitation volume, and give 5-star ratings. Usually, if it was done by humans, it will be less likely to be noticed.ā
One of the ASO companies quoted the price stating that purchasing 500 downloads from Google Play cost just a bit over HK$100.
Source: Stand News #Feb22
#Clickrate #FakeDownloads