Apple is sending ‘take down’ notices to AppTrackr, the most popular cracked iOS apps market place. AppTrackr announced in a blog post, via Installous, that Apple has been sending huge “take down” notices over cracked apps and aggressively scrapping AppTrackr’s links.
For those unfamiliar, AppTrackr is not a direct distributor of cracked iOS apps, however, it indexes the .ipa of any popular app or game. AppTrackr provides a cracked apps market app named Insallous where user can search, download and even update their installed cracked apps. AppSync is the main utility which allows these cracked apps to be trasferred via iTunes sync
Over the last several months, Apple has been scraping apptrackr for links and sending huge takedown notices for a ton of content. We’ve been working to keep apptrackr up-to-date, but the only (effective) way to prevent automated takedowns was to add a CAPTCHA to outbound links. In addition, we finished moving our servers to several different countries earlier this week. This has raised our costs far beyond what we can afford with declining donations, meaning that we will have to place an advertisement on that CAPTCHA page…
This statement made by Apptrackr, via Installous, clearly shows that Apple is serious to address the iOS apps piracy issue.
To counter Apple’s stance against cracked apps for iOS, AppTrackr has moved several of their servers to countries with no copyright laws. They have also added CAPATCHA to all outbound links. This move has resulted in higher oprating cost, so AppTrackr is placing an ad on the CAPATCHA page to keep the server up and running.
It will be interesting to see how long Apptrackr/Installous will be able to operate whilst feeling Apple’s Wrath. Let us know your views on this issue in the comments section below…
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