HACKER Q&A
📣 WateryRaccoon

Why are we receiving thousands of fake users?


We are a small company (<20 employees) who publish an popular app (within its niche) used by millions of people. The majority of our real users reside in North/Central America and Western Europe. Recently we began to see hundreds of thousands of installs showing up on Google Analytics from unexpected countries. The installs did not show up on the Play Console analytics, implying these users obtained the .apk from some other source. The bulk of these users are from Pakistan, India, Egypt, and Iraq, but these installs are also occurring in dozens of other developing countries. The event data we get from Google Analytics implies that most of the users quickly uninstall the app after installing it. About 5-10% of them create an account and verify their email address. We've gotten a handful of support emails and a couple of Play Store reviews wherein the user claims our app was installed without their intent or knowledge. We are concerned that whoever is behind this has a malicious objective, but haven't come up with a plausible explanation, and thus are hoping someone else has experienced similar phenomenon and would recognize this pattern.

  👤 ian0 Accepted Answer ✓
Third party app stores are common here in Indonesia, while working on a previous app we found ~20-30% of users installed APKs via them.

They were the lowest converting segment, this was related to the demographic (rural & lower income). People were installing without understanding what the app did, subsequently uninstalling again as memory is scarce. Its hard to understand, but sometimes people just browse and download things out of boredom, curiosity or because they misunderstand what the app is for.

We also had complaints like yours "I didn't install this app" but when we contacted them direct (googled name, sent email/FB message) we often found that a spouse / kid had done so. Shared phones are common.

Im not sure if this could be related to your circumstances, it depends on the type of app you have. Also if its something that a kid may download, recent events may contribute. With covid there are lots of kids using their parents devices at home, with low cost / free data plans in place to support online schooling.

👤 chris1993
We have seen something similar. Thousands of installs and immediate refunds in African countries far exceeding the number of 'real' installs. We contacted Google support but they just said everything is working as expected.
👤 parliament32
Follow the money, who's being paid per-install for your app? Are you paying them, or are your in-app ads?
👤 bzb6
Just block users from third world countries. They are too often more trouble than they are worth.
👤 grassgreener
Could be a click farm by an ad agency trying to meet a campaign target. Do you have ads within your application?
👤 hindsightbias
In what ways could your competition screw you?
👤 iSloth
Do you have any SMS verification built into the signup?