Would you trust this app? A.I.type

[amlothi]

There was a post in this forum by a user called Broto25 attempting to trade positive reviews with other developers.

That post has since been edited to remove the name of the application, and was locked by a moderator. The app in question is:

Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.aitype.android

Website: A.I.type Typing Has Never Been Easier

It's a keyboard application. Notice the permissions:

HARDWARE CONTROLS
RECORD AUDIO
Allows application to access the audio record path.
NETWORK COMMUNICATION
FULL INTERNET ACCESS
Allows an application to create network sockets.

When I saw this, I will admit that I was immediately suspicious. A keyboard app that has internet access sure seems like a good way to steal people's passwords. Add to that, the fact that someone was trying to influence the app's reviews in a "less than honest" manner, and I proceeded to the Market and places a review of my own as a warning for others.

The next day I received a message from the purported developer of the app, who goes by noamroatem on this forum.

Hi amlothi,


Broto25 is by all means not a member of A.I.type. We are checking now if he is acting on our behalf for some reason, and if so, we will make sure he/she stops immediately.

Anyway, A.I.type Keyboard is a legitimate keyboard developed by A.I.type L.T.D. - a legitimate company. We are working around the clock to provide the world a state-of-the-art text prediction and auto correction.

The prediction is generated by our servers on the Cloud. This is why some information is sent over the Internet. I can assure you, though, that no sensitive info is collected by us, and your texts are not read by anyone or saved anywhere.

I completely agree that market rating should be done by the quality of the application and this is why I ask you please to remove your offending comment from the market. We, in return, will make sure that nobody - including Broto25 if related somehow to us - will be trolling for us in forums - a technique we do not support or use.

Thanks and appreciation for your understanding.

Best regards,

Noam Rotem
Founder, VP R&D
A.I.type
(email address edited out by alostpacket, to contact him use firstname.lastname [at] domain.com)

First, I'd like to thank Noam for his kind and professional response. However, I still have huge reservations about this app.

1) I have no way to know what data A.I.type is going to send to the cloud to assist in prediction. I don't know whether it is stored, for how long, or who might have access to it. I have no way to verify Noam's statement in this regard.

2) I find it very difficult to believe that someone who is "not a member of A.I.type" would be attempting to barter for positive reviews for this app. What would be their motivation? I find it hard to believe that Broto25 was not "acting on behalf" of the application (directly or indirectly).

3) If Noam is sincere, and Broto25 was not authorized to make that post, then I am left with a lack of confidence in the A.I.type application development/marketing team to control the actions of their staff and/or affiliates. What if they had a rogue programmer, instead of a rogue marketing schlep, who actually wanted to steal our private information and passwords?


So, I open this up for discussion and I welcome Noam to provide input in this thread as well. If people believe his app to be legitimate and trustworthy, perhaps this thread will generate some positive reviews. However, I personally have reservations about the application that I wanted to share with others on this forum.

 

[sohguanh]

I also receive on and off requests from other developers to put some positive reviews on their apps and they do the same on my apps. I did not accept the offer.

So nowadays all app reviews I take it with a pinch of salt. They do not truly reflect the sentiment of end users. They can be 'faked' and could be their friends or register as other nicks to boost his/her own app review to 'lure' unsuspecting users.

Somehow the whole review/comments system for Android need more tweaking to filter out such acts of dishonesty from some app developers.

 

[wayrad]

Verrrry interesting.

FWIW, there's a Broto25 who seems to be a freelance Linux programmer in New Zealand, and AIType is in Israel.


Someone need not be part of a company to be hired to promote it...

(Probably not worth too much worrying about though, the mods seem to have taken care of it!)

 

[alostpacket]

Yep, the truth is a lot of spammers are seeing a lot of success gaming the Android Market at the moment. They have gotten apps into the top 100 in a matter of days with paid fake reviews and whatnot.

Really the best way to guard against it is to reward the honest devs and help them through word of mouth and beware the sockpuppets and shills. And most of all watch out for those permissions.

That said, a keyboard app that has it's own voice recognition, could very well need internet access. Hard to say for sure, as amlothi correctly noted it creates a large security risk in the process.

 

[alostpacket]

Also, FYI - I removed the guy's email from the quote as spambots read this site (well, all sites) looking for email address links.

 

[amlothi]

That said, a keyboard app that has it's own voice recognition, could very well need internet access. Hard to say for sure, as amlothi correctly noted it creates a large security risk in the process.

Yeah, this is the thing that bothered me more than the attempts to get bad reviews. Mostly because I'm used to filtering through reviews and I like to believe that my BS-detector is pretty well tuned.

It was the combination of the attempts to solicit reviews + the possible security issues that made me think it might be malware. I have no evidence of that; however, and I haven't downloaded it.