I’ve been facing a frustrating and recurring issue with my application being stolen and published on Amazon’s platform without my consent. Despite reporting these instances and successfully getting the fraudulent apps removed, they continue to appear under different accounts.
My question is: how are these unauthorized apps passing Amazon’s review process in the first place? I ensure that my app is compliant with all guidelines, and seeing clones of my work online has been both disheartening and concerning.
I would appreciate any insights into:
How the current review system could be bypassed by these bad actors.
What measures Amazon might take to strengthen their app review process.
Any additional steps I, as a developer, can take to protect my intellectual property.
I understand the importance of a fair and open platform, but I hope Amazon can enhance their safeguards to better protect legitimate developers like us.
Looking forward to hearing from others who may have faced a similar issue or have advice to share.
Thank you for bringing this important issue to our attention and for your continued trust in the Amazon Developer Platform. We take intellectual property rights very seriously and understand how frustrating it can be to discover unauthorized copies of your work.
We are continuously working to enhance our app review process and implement additional safeguards to protect developers’ intellectual property. While we cannot discuss specific details of our security measures, please be assured that we are:
Strengthening our detection systems for potential IP violations
Improving our review processes to better identify unauthorized submissions
Working to expedite the removal process when violations are reported
If you believe another app is using content that infringes upon your intellectual property, you can report it to Amazon using our online form or contact our developer support team with specific details.
We appreciate your feedback as it helps us improve our platform’s security measures.
Thank you for being part of our developer community.
Thank you so much for your response. I truly appreciate Amazon’s swift actions in addressing such violations, which are notably better compared to other platforms.
However, we are struggling to publish our games on Amazon, even though they are successfully published on other stores like the Play Store and App Store. The process of proving ownership of our games seems overly complicated. Meanwhile, we cannot understand how these thieves manage to steal and publish our apps on the platform so easily.
To make matters worse, the stolen versions include our original ad IDs, yet the buttons in their apps don’t work, and the overall experience is broken.
We are also concerned that these bad actors could use the same online forms to harm our original product. Unfortunately, our app is now difficult to find in the store, and downloads have dropped drastically as a result.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I understand your concerns regarding scam apps and the potential impact on legitimate developers. I’ve shared your feedback, along with the specific accounts mentioned, with the relevant teams for their review and action. We truly appreciate your efforts in helping us maintain the integrity of the Appstore.
Recently, right after posting about a topic related to our app on Amazon Appstore, our developer email was flooded with phishing spam messages. Most of these emails impersonate Amazon, attempting to deceive us into providing sensitive information.
What makes this situation particularly concerning is the timing. The influx of phishing messages began immediately after we raised a specific issue, suggesting it may not be a coincidence. It appears that scammers are actively targeting Amazon Appstore developers through multiple channels.
Please tell me how is it possible applications which copied the original and unique icons and screens of my own apps to pass the review process of Amazon Appstore and to be published without any problem. Don’t tell me it’s impossible to be detected and filtered out automatically.
At the same time you delay the publishing of my apps with ridiculous reasons - very often you tell me their icons and screens are not unique and represents another applications which is not true.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s concerning to hear about the phishing attempts you’ve encountered. To ensure the safety and security of everyone in the community, I’d like to remind everyone to avoid posting sensitive information or personally identifiable information (PII) publicly on forums or other platforms. We will also share this feedback with our internal teams to help improve security measures.
To ensure your issue is addressed by the correct team, please contact us via the Contact Us form and provide your app name/ID for further investigation. When filling out the form, you may select the Category “Appstore” and the Topic “Content Policy and Test Results” from the drop-down lists.
I’ve already done it multiple times but without any result provided from the Amazon Appstore side. At the same time, Amazon Appstore is flooded with counterfeit applications continuously every single day and “mysteriously” they are approved by your colleagues.
The interesting here is that I’va paid to third party to create a test developer account and to try to publish three apps identical to the mentioned counterfeit applications. This three apps have been detected and rejected immediately and the developer account associated with them suspended. How is this possible?
Even today, Amazon Appstore is flooded with hundreds of applications which violate third party intellectual property and your own copyright policies like: Minecraft, Snapchat, TikTok, EA games, Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, Sprunki, Fortnite, Harry Potter, Roblox, Call of Duty, Dragon Ball Z, Plants vs. Zombies, Toca Boca, MARVEL, Spider Man, Poppy Paytime, Angry Birds, and many more.
Go to: Amazon Appstore → Search Apps → Sort by: Release Date