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Doctor Q

Administrator
Original poster
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,778
7,500
Los Angeles
We would like to caution application developers that one or more scammers have contacted iPhone and iPod touch software developers by email, pretending they are from MacRumors and asking for free promo codes "for review." Accessory companies have also been targeted by the scammers.

Some of these messages claim to be making a request "on behalf of https://www.macrumors.com/". Others claim to be from Arnold Kim (owner of MacRumors). Some of the scammers use email addresses of the form macrumors@somedomain.com or arn.kim@somedomain.com, while others use unrelated addresses. These addresses have no connection to MacRumors and the messages are fraudulent.

One known scammer going by the names of Alex Wilson and Novica Josifovski has been particularly proficient over an extended period of time. The scammer has used the following email addresses in their correspondence: haker_novica@hotmail.com and mate01@live.com.

Any email from MacRumors, its owner, or its staff will come from @macrumors.com. Remember that email addresses can be forged too and we're not the only website that scammers pretend to represent. All businesses should be cautious about unsolicited requests for copies of their products.

We have heard from several developers who were appropriately suspicious of scam email. If you doubt the authenticity of a message claiming to be from MacRumors, contact us.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

tico24

macrumors 6502
Jun 17, 2007
480
2
Eastleigh, UK
I received one of these the other day. It was very convincing (except for the @live email address). Luckily I thought to check with Dr Q before giving away a free copy of my app.
 

WiiMarioHacker

macrumors member
Apr 3, 2010
96
0
I received one of these the other day. It was very convincing (except for the @live email address). Luckily I thought to check with Dr Q before giving away a free copy of my app.

Bold&Italic= Made me crack up laughing. People do some drastic things only to be rated out by an email extension.


Anyway, thanks for the warning, and glad MR got a report about it.
 

Mike777

macrumors member
May 1, 2010
51
0
sounds like people who can't even be bothered to shell out a dollar to try an app before cracking it.

Thats the only reason I dislike jailbroken stuff.
 

nomadmtb

macrumors member
Nov 5, 2008
34
0
Really?! Can they not afford to buy the freaking app themselves? Sad that people do stuff like this. Geeze.
 

loaferkan

macrumors member
Aug 25, 2012
98
0
I received an email like this. Really convincing but i just notice that they are just using a yahoo account. Now that part is really strange, they should have used the company's email account and not just yahoo.
 

cdbautista

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2013
2
1
United States
I've been receiving emails similar to this and when I see that they're only using email addresses from hotmail or gmail or yahoo, it's already a red flag that something's not right. I wasn't aware that they could also make it look like it came from a legitimate business email. Good to know.
 
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joeyzhu

macrumors newbie
Jul 2, 2013
10
0
Thanks for your warning

Thanks for your warning. :(, Those scammers are so crafty.
 

amyleslo

macrumors newbie
Oct 29, 2013
1
0
Mobile Application Development

Such a really nice and great informative post.After read thread post i have gain lot of experienced related to iPhone App and Development.Thanks for share with us. :cool:
 

iphonecaptain

macrumors newbie
Oct 15, 2013
5
0
Question

I've been receiving emails similar to this and when I see that they're only using email addresses from hotmail or gmail or yahoo, it's already a red flag that something's not right. I wasn't aware that they could also make it look like it came from a legitimate business email. Good to know.

Are we allowed have links such as these in our email signatures? I ask because if so, I will include mine.
 

Michaelgtrusa

macrumors 604
Oct 13, 2008
7,900
1,821
I've seen this via twitter also, I asked dev for codes to share here to help spread the word and posted them in the promo section.
 

miknos

Suspended
Mar 14, 2008
940
793
I imagine they're downloading the app so they can rip and share the app for people with JB devices and make money from (website) ads. It's easier to spam developers than pay for dozen, maybe hundreds of apps.
 
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lumencreative

macrumors regular
May 19, 2014
137
91
Lancashire
reminds me of all these emails we get at work from 'leading web development companies in india' that are that 'leading' that they only have gmail accounts to send emails from.
 

ExpertDeveloper

macrumors newbie
Dec 25, 2017
1
0
This infomationis really useful and makes one aware of the wrong practices. But then it is also an eye opener and we would be careful in future.
 
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