Apple frequently gets hit by lawsuits in the West, so adding one more to the list probably doesn’t make much of a difference. That being said, the reason behind the latest one is a bit out of the ordinary, as it involves the bitten fruit brand’s App Store. Specifically, the company is being hit with a class action lawsuit over letting a cryptocurrency scam operate on said App Store.
The app in question is one known as Swiftcrypt, and has been described as part of a broader “pig butchering” scam. For those unfamiliar with the term, it involves a process of pressuring or making victims lower their guard over a longer period of time. In this specific case, victims are goaded into making deposits of ever increasing sizes, before suddenly being locked out.
According to the account of lead plaintiff Danyell Shin, she downloaded the app late last year after being introduced to it by an online investment group. Believing it to be trustworthy, partially since it’s being listed in the Apple App Store, she had put in over US$80,000 (~RM340,400) before the funds suddenly vanished.
Apple has always claimed that apps were reviewed rigorously being being let into the App Store. In a similar vein, the company has always used this reasoning to justify keeping its walled garden the way it is. But with this case, the plaintiff argues that the representation of safety and everything else that it entails “were false and misleading”, saying that an app like Swiftcrypt should have never made it onto the App Store.
(Source: CoinGeek [1], [2, PDF])
