pentacent_hq

The scam app uses the same name and icon - so a coincidence seems rather unlikely.

Well done! I didn't want to promote either the app or the fake listing, but you did find it. As you can see, the App Store listing uses the ClipGrab icon (which isn't on the website but you'll see it if you download the app) and, well, the name. It also claims to be "Trusted by 1M+ users" ... while having 6 reviews with an average of 2/5 stars.

So yeah, it doesn't claim to do the same thing in the description - but it's vague enough that a casual reader might think it does. And the fact that they use the name and the icon makes it pretty obvious that they're trying to trick people who are looking for an iOS version of ClipGrab into paying them money. This is also made evident by the fact that I have received a number of complaints from users who were convinced, they had paid for a "pro version" of ClipGrab that was now simply not doing what they expected.

Thanks! Its so weird that Apple claims the App Store monopoly is necessary to ensure they can vet apps and protect users - but then they don't even let you report an obvious scam.

> Also, all you formally complained about is a trademark infringement

Which is precisely why I asked if there's a better way to report scam apps that I might have missed. But unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case and you don't seem to have an answer either.

The App Store listing is pretty clearly a scam and the app is clearly pretending to be my app when it isn't. It's also not some small obscure app, it is well-known enough that there there are Wikipedia articles in serveral languages about it.

So Apple should really be taking action on both counts, in my opinion.

Do you have real-world experience deploying PoW captchas? I'd love to give them a try but I'm worried my forms will end up getting overwhelmed with spam if I switch away from hCaptcha.

As someone who as founded companies in Germany, I can understand a lot of the frustration with some parts of the process. It does indeed feel archaic that the notary has to read everything out aloud and the process for opening a bank account is maybe not terribly compicated but still more complicated than it needs to. The fact that getting a VAT number can take so long is also really infuriating.

With that being said, it seems like the author received some poor advice from their law firm:

1) If the author mostly does consulting and contract work, a sole proprietorship would have been the better option as many others here have already pointed out.

2) The UG & Co. KG construct is unnecessarily complex for a small company; it does have some advantages but if they really wanted a limited liability company, they should have used the "Musterprotokoll" (standard protocol) for setting up a UG; that would probably have cost less than €500. Lawyers love to suggest GmbH/UG & Co KG though because it means more fees for them.

3) The advice they got regarding the name was almost certainly incorrect. First of all, "case law" is not really a thing in civil law countries like Germany. The company name usually gets checked by the local chamber of commerce (IHK) and while there are some rules (you're not allowed to just call your company the equivalent of "Supermarket Co", "Plenty UG" would have almost certainly been fine. And if the IHK says it's fine, the court will accept it too.

Anyways, now that you have your company, I wish you all the best with it. You have exciting times ahead and the frustrating bit is (almost) over :-)

This is such a good analogy, thank you!

Thanks for sharing! My current experience is that honeypot fields are often ignored by the bots we're dealing with, but adding hCaptcha is pretty reliable in getting rid of them.

Well, that's why I am asking for practical experience using these tools. Maybe most form spam bots are (still) not advanced enough to complete PoW captchas. Have you tried Altcha or mCaptcha in production?

Well, that's just not true, is it? Try having any public form and you'll see tons of bot submissions, add a captcha, most of them go away.

Thanks! Would you be able to share a bit more of what you've heard about Altcha?

Nice!