Rogue heart rate app with $90 in-app purchase highlights flaws in Apple’s App Store review process

“Today, multiple media outlets brought attention to a malicious ‘heart rate’ scanning app that attempted to dupe wide-eyed shoppers into buying a $90 in-app purchase, which highlights that Apple still needs to do a lot more work on the app review process,” Andrew O’Hara writes for AppleInsider.
“The entire app is fraudulent and purports to read a users heart rate by having them place their finger on the Touch ID sensor,” O’Hara writes. “In actuality, after a second or so of random ‘heart rate’ values flashing on the screen, the app dims the screen to its minimum brightness and invokes an in-app purchase for $89.99.”
“It is obvious this app should have never made it past the review process, not even looking at the substantial cost of the in-app purchase, considering that it is impossible for your iPhone to actually read your heart rate through the Touch ID sensor. The scam is even more obvious when used on a newer device that relies on Face ID When I ran the app on our iPhone XS Max — which lacks Touch ID — the app still claimed to show me my heart rate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: To call Apple’s App Store reviews a “process” demeans the word. It certainly comes across as poorly staffed and/or badly automated and the results are a lot more random than any process we’ve seen.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TJ” for the heads up.]