How do I check country of origin for apps in the iOS App Store? My experience is that looking for the listed developer isn't always accurate and the App Store doesn't appear to show country of origin.
My current practices for estimating country of origin for security purposes:
- Check for "Engrish": extremely broken grammar associated with automatic translation tools. Most Chinese knockoff apps have "Engrish" descriptions. However, bear in mind that broken grammar doesn't always mean "software from China" – it's common to have this happen with apps from Asia in general.
- Developer or vendor appears to have a Chinese or Russian name. In these cases I usually do an additional Google search to verify this. Taiwan uses the same language as China (although their character sets are written differently) – another thing to check so I don't incorrectly flag Taiwanese apps as coming from China.
- Check the developer's other apps. What languages and countries do they appear to be geared towards? If I see anything geared towards China or Russia, I usually reject the developer.
- Check the listed language availability. Generally, an app that offers only English and Simplified (not Traditional/Taiwanese) Chinese is a telltale sign that it comes from China.
- Online search (background check) for the developer. This often fails in the case of apps designed by extremely small teams or independent developers.
Here's a list of things that often go wrong when pinpointing where an app comes from:
- Publisher or developer uses a front company outside their country to mask country of origin. I remember a recent instance of this where a Russian publisher opened a front company in Ireland and listed that.
- Search turns up no results. A lot of app developers are small independent software companies with no name recognition, and many don't have a dedicate website or show up on search results.
- Listed developer (below the app name) doesn't match the listed seller. In some cases, the listed seller is obviously a joke or incorrect. I recall one app where the seller was listed as "Michael Jackson", even though that clearly was not the developer's name.
Is there a better way to do this?
Best Answer
You are not safer in the Appstore than anyware else: the only thing that is scrutinized by Apple is how the app works correctly in OS and that it works only in the api (which already is a good direction) but it can still be a bad app.