"Microsoft is cracking down on fake Windows Store apps" -The Verge

[shermantanker]

"Microsoft's Windows and Windows Phone app stores have faced several issues with fake and scam applications over the years, but the software maker appears to be finally cracking down. After recent reports highlighting scams that lead people to pay for useless apps that are typically free, Microsoft's Windows Apps and Store general manager, Todd Brix, says the company will be enforcing its policies more strictly in future.

The scam apps are going away

While Microsoft made some changes earlier this year to its app certification requirements, Brix says Microsoft has been conducting a review of the Windows Store to find apps that don't comply with the guidelines. Microsoft's policies state names need to be clear and icons must be differentiated to avoid being mistaken with others. A number of fake VLC apps were listed in the store recently, each a fake app designed to scam Windows users out of money. It's not clear why these apps made it past certification in the first place, but Microsoft says it has been reaching out to developers to make changes to existing apps that fall foul of the rules.

Most developers have agreed to make changes, but Brix notes "others have been less receptive" and Microsoft has removed more than 1,500 apps as a result. "The Store review is ongoing and we recognize that we have more work to do, but we’re on it," says Brix. "No approach is perfect, so we encourage people to report any issues they may encounter with Windows Store." Microsoft isn't alone in its app store challenges, Google Play and Apple's App Store have both faced issues with cloned and fake apps in the past."

 

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/27/6076381/microsoft-windows-store-fake-apps-crackdown

 

[Deletive]

Is this why their app store is so bare?

[Firearm2112]

Its about time

[shermantanker]

Its about time

That it is. They must have been watching the WANshow last week. lol

[AlwaysFSX]

Is this why their app store is so bare?

Because they know there's nothing worthwhile to put on it.

[jmaster299]

Likely in due to the fact that people were accusing MS of willingly allowing the apps to make money from them.

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/200012-microsoft-willingly-allowing-malicious-apps-in-the-windows-store-to-obtain-a-cut-of-the-profits/#entry2711238

[Sharp_3yE]

This is great. I just read the wpcentral article on this. http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-takes-consumer-side-new-policy-changes-banish-misleading-apps

1500 apps have already been taken off for not complying with the new changes.

[jmaster299]

This I'd great. I just read the wpcentral article on this. http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-takes-consumer-side-new-policy-changes-banish-misleading-apps

1500 apps have already been taken off for not complying with the new changes.

It would be nice to see Google respond to criticism like this. As bas things were on MS's app store, Google Play is still a steaming cesspool of malicious apps that Google refuses to remove or block in the first place like Apple does.

http://www.riskiq.com/company/press-releases/riskiq-reports-malicious-mobile-apps-google-play-have-spiked-nearly-400 

[GoodBytes]

Yea, I have noticed the day before many crap apps disappearing.

[ilikemacandpc]

I feel like this is just a publicity stunt...

 

MS doesn't care really. 

[Trik'Stari]

Sure, and they're going to start better supporting pc gaming as well!

[GoodBytes]

Sure, and they're going to start better supporting pc gaming as well!

Well, if you checked, you'll see that Microsoft did a massive clean up.

[deviant88]

Microsoft is trailing so badly lol,xbone,windows phone wannabe, app store(google wannabe), IE > chrome/firefox wannabe, the only luck they have is with windows its so bad it would go out of production if it really had a couple serious competittors really.

[Speedbird]

I thought the title said Minecraft

[GoodBytes]

Microsoft is trailing so badly lol,xbone,windows phone wannabe, app store(google wannabe), IE > chrome/firefox wannabe, the only luck they have is with windows its so bad it would go out of production if it really had a couple serious competittors really.

Office, OneDrive, Surface Pro line (arguable thought), Visual Studio, Microsoft Project, Visio, SharePoint, MSE and Defender (in Win8), PowerSehll, XBox, SQL Server, and probably more things that doesn't come to mind.

[LAwLz]

Office, OneDrive, Surface Pro line (arguable thought), Visual Studio, Microsoft Project, Visio, SharePoint, MSE and Defender (in Win8), PowerSehll, XBox, SQL Server, and probably more things that doesn't come to mind.

I only agree with some of those. For example OneDrive has just as good competitors. Visual Studio is good but there are very good alternatives.

The Xbone is a big flop.

PowerShell is just not as good as bash and the GNU tools.

I mean, the products you listed aren't bad but they are not really exception in their areas.

[GoodBytes]

I only agree with some of those. For example OneDrive has just as good competitors. Visual Studio is good but there are very good alternatives.

The Xbone is a big flop.

PowerShell is just not as good as bash and the GNU tools.

I mean, the products you listed aren't bad but they are not really exception in their areas.

OneDrive has currently the best deal, and features then any other service

Visual Studio is simply the best. They are 0 real alternative to it, at the professional level, for C/C++/C#/VB/ASP.NET/F#. Basically Eclipse and NetBean is for Java, and it's really not great. That is why Microsoft can charge what they want, and companies have 0 problem getting it.

PowerShell is greatly used in IT. Not something else. So it is successful.

[LAwLz]

OneDrive has currently the best deal, and features then any other service

The Google Drive deal seems pretty much equal, and DropBox just updated their deal to include more storage and some handy sharing features.

 

Visual Studio is simply the best. They are 0 real alternative to it, at the professional level, for C/C++/C#/VB/ASP.NET/F#. Basically Eclipse and NetBean is for Java, and it's really not great. That is why Microsoft can charge what they want, and companies have 0 problem getting it.

How about Code::Blocks? Eclipse can do C and C++ as well.

I mean, I have always used Visual Studio so that's what I am used to, but at for example Google you can use whichever IDE you want. Many people don't even use an IDE. They use for example VIM, Emacs or Notepad++ and then for example the GNU Debugger and GCC. Apple obviously use Xcode. I don't think the answer is as clear cut as "VS is the best and everyone uses it".

 

PowerShell is greatly used in IT. Not something else. So it is successful.

Never said it wasn't used. What I said was that bash and the GNU tools are better (at least in my opinion), and the fact that cygwin and bash are so very popular downloads on Windows I'd assume that a lot of people feel the same way.

I think its success is mostly because it is bundled with Windows, not because it is just so good. I think it's the same as with Internet Explorer. It's successful but its success is pretty much only because it is the default in Windows.

[GoodBytes]

Google Drive highly compresses images, and has horrible, like there is no denying, emulation of Word files. The layout of documents are often broken.

OneDrive has Office online, and has no problem. Kingsoft and heck LibreOffice does a far far better job, so Google can do it, let alone have the resources to do. So, no excuse on that front.

Tried both. And I don't mean personally. I mean at work, we all tried both IDEs. No one like them, and I had NetBean crash on me, and Eclipse screwed up with our Git server. It decided to magically, take a line of the new code, and put it next to the old version. For every line of code. What a mess. Luckily we have backup. Completely unreliable mess. I had my share of problem with Eclipse and NetBean at university where I am forced to code in Java. Personally, I'll be glad to cash out the money for Visual Studio than use these software. In fact, at work we decided to upgrade to VS2013 after our testing for alternatives. Everything just works, and pretty darn well. Like really, tip of hat to Microsoft.

Oh and the alternative IDEs dont have the add-ons that Visual Studio have, and the number of features is lacking in comparison.

If I had to complain about it, is the lack of touch screen control and proper high-DPI support (supports it, everything shows fine, but icons are blurry). Hopefully next version.

[LAwLz]

Google Drive highly compresses images, and has horrible, like there is no denying, emulation of Word files. The layout of documents are often broken.

I just tested a JPEG and a PNG. Both of them were exactly the same once they were uploaded. Are you perhaps getting Google Drive confused with Google+? Google Drive will keep all files exactly the same when they are uploaded. Google+ will compress things.

I will admit that Microsoft Office is better than whatever Google call their online tools though. The PDF viewer is really good but it doesn't stand a chance against Word and PowerPoint.

 

 

Tried both. And I don't mean personally. I mean at work, we all tried both IDEs. No one like them, and I had NetBean crash on me, and Eclipse screwed up with our Git server. It decided to magically, take a line of the new code, and put it next to the old version. For every line of code. What a mess. Luckily we have backup. Completely unreliable mess. I had my share of problem with Eclipse and NetBean at university where I am forced to code in Java. Personally, I'll be glad to cash out the money for Visual Studio than use these software. In fact, at work we decided to upgrade to VS2013 after our testing for alternatives. Everything just works, and pretty darn well. Like really, tip of hat to Microsoft. If I had to complain about it, is the lack of touch screen control and proper high-DPI support (supports it, everything shows fine, but icons are blurry). Hopefully next version.

The problem with anecdotes is that you can pretty much always find someone with the complete opposite experience. I can probably find many people who changed from <insert some way of programming> to Visual Studio and had a terrible experience as well.

I really like Visual Studio, although it loves bitching about using "unsecure" functions and would rather you use Microsoft's proprietary functions. Like it won't compile by default if you use scanf and forces you to use scanf_s (protected against buffer overflows) or to suppress the warning with #define _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE. It would be nice if it just gave me a warning but allowed me to compile anyway. Too much hand holding can be annoying as well.

Anyway I kind of got off on a tangent. Different people prefer different things. Visual Studio is good but there are many alternatives which a lot of people prefer. It's not the crème de la crème of programming.

[GoodBytes]

I just tested a JPEG and a PNG. Both of them were exactly the same once they were uploaded. Are you perhaps getting Google Drive confused with Google+? Google Drive will keep all files exactly the same when they are uploaded. Google+ will compress things.

I will admit that Microsoft Office is better than whatever Google call their online tools though. The PDF viewer is really good but it doesn't stand a chance against Word and PowerPoint.

Watch WAN show. Everytime they show a document with an image, like Build Log of the Week, the image are super compressed. This is Google, they have the ressources to not do that.

 

The problem with anecdotes is that you can pretty much always find someone with the complete opposite experience. I can probably find many people who changed from <insert some way of programming> to Visual Studio and had a terrible experience as well.

I really like Visual Studio, although it loves bitching about using "unsecure" functions and would rather you use Microsoft's proprietary functions. Like it won't compile by default if you use scanf and forces you to use scanf_s (protected against buffer overflows) or to suppress the warning with #define _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE. It would be nice if it just gave me a warning but allowed me to compile anyway. Too much hand holding can be annoying as well.

Anyway I kind of got off on a tangent. Different people prefer different things. Visual Studio is good but there are many alternatives which a lot of people prefer. It's not the crème de la crème of programming.

Well, you are not supposed to use non-safe code. It's improper. And suppressing it is even worse, as you ignore a potential security issue.

https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/articles/tools/source-code-analysis/source-code-analysis-tools---example-programs

[LAwLz]

Watch WAN show. Everytime they show a document with an image, like Build Log of the Week, the image are super compressed. This is Google, they have the ressources to not do that.

Again, if you upload an image to Google Drive it will not be compressed. I just tried it and I recommend you try it as well.

I have not watched Build Logs (the after party airs at like 3 AM here) but if the images looks compressed then they are not directly uploaded to Google Drive (you know, as JPG or PNG images) or it is because the stream itself is compressed (which it is).

Just go and check it out for yourself. I just did and my images was not altered in any way.

 

 

Well, you are not supposed to use non-safe code. It's improper. And suppressing it is even worse, as you ignore a potential security issue.

https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/articles/tools/source-code-analysis/source-code-analysis-tools---example-programs

The problem is that it won't even let me compile even though the code is 100% true ANSI compliant. It's nice that they warn you about it, but they are basically forcing me to use their proprietary function which is not cross platform.

I think they show give me a warning but let me compile anyway. Too much hand holding is just as bad as too little if you ask me. Maybe I have prevented too big inputs earlier in the code in order to keep the security but also stay platform independent?

Anyway that is really nitpicking. My point was that VS is not the be-all-end all IDE. Some people like it and some don't.

[GoodBytes]

Again, if you upload an image to Google Drive it will not be compressed. I just tried it and I recommend you try it as well.

I have not watched Build Logs (the after party airs at like 3 AM here) but if the images looks compressed then they are not directly uploaded to Google Drive (you know, as JPG or PNG images) or it is because the stream itself is compressed (which it is).

Just go and check it out for yourself. I just did and my images was not altered in any way.

Well what can I say. Then I don't know what Linus does then.

Regardless, if break Office formats, while other alternative office suits don't.

 

The problem is that it won't even let me compile even though the code is 100% true ANSI compliant. It's nice that they warn you about it, but they are basically forcing me to use their proprietary function which is not cross platform.

I think they show give me a warning but let me compile anyway. Too much hand holding is just as bad as too little if you ask me. Maybe I have prevented too big inputs earlier in the code in order to keep the security but also stay platform independent?

I have no programed cross platform, but I believe there is a way using #ifdef You can make a function where you have your ifDef's, and call the safe version of each platform. Always use safe code.Unsafe code is not good enough.

[GoodBytes]

Example:

void mySafeFunction() {     #ifdef _MSC_VER      // Safe code version for VisualStudio     #elif __MINGW32__     // Safe code version for MingW32     #elif __GNUC__     // Safe code version of GNUC     #endif}

[LAwLz]

Well it does. What can I say.

Do you want me to record myself checking the hash of a photo, upload it to Google drive, download it again and check the hash again? I just did it myself to verify and I can safely say that not a single bit in the entire image was changed. Actually you know what... Here. I recorded myself doing it.

Just because you keep repeating it doesn't make it true.