More pesky spam on the Windows Phone Marketplace. Come on Microsoft.

By Rich Edmonds
last updated

We're back again with more spam (or useless app deployment) rants, folks. Apologies in advance but it really tickles the annoyed spot when we come across developers who either believe it's perfectly fine to publish copyrighted content with other owned properties, or simply launch themselves on a crap-posting-spree.

The last time we touched on spam itself, we were following the work of Eric_Rulz, but don't worry if you missed our coverage and investigation as his account is still present as well as the apps he produced. This is a developer who was obviously on a path to cause trouble by building and releasing apps that hold little (if any) functionality that's useful for consumers. In fact, he has an app called Spam (opens in new tab).

Unfortunately we've noticed some more extreme levels of spam, from a developer called Bhavana Khatri.

As one can see there's little need for the range of apps available - unless you wish to have an app specifically dedicated to cabbage stir fry, of course. If you remember back to our previous entanglement with Eric_Rulz, Microsoft implemented measures to help prevent such instances occurring again, but it seems as though we're naked to attacks from those who have the single desire to publish a mess to the Marketplace.

We're hoping this publicity will alert Microsoft at just what's going on, but do let us know in the comments if you've encountered any spam lately.

You can check out some more useful apps by Bhavana Khatri (opens in new tab) over on the Marketplace.

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds is Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him over on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

47 Comments
  • The down side is that MS does not seem to care. Drive me nuts seeing junk like that. I don't even use the marketplace due to the junk, I rely on third party apps or reviews here on in forums to find my apps.
  • My view exactly!
  • MS thinks the more apps the better. I can't blame developers for trying to make a buck or too. If you guys don't like the junk don't download it or put the developer on the spot instead blame MS for allowing a market that will turn in to a nasty one like the one on Android.
  • Yalla apps is another worthless spammer
  • Talks has published useful stuff, IIRC. I wonder if they're just a publisher for other developers and the spam is not actually Yalla's dev work.
  • Yalla, not Talks. *grumbles at autocorrect*
  • yalla apps are not spammers at all; they publish for developers in the middle east who didn't (still don't?) have access to the wp store. some apps may be kind of shitty, but there's a lot of good, quality apps they help push out and have been a mainstay for foreign wp developers since day 1.
  • Thanks for the info, I wondered about Yalla...
  • Not spammers but makers of garbage. Carbon has been broken since day one and they have done nothing to fix that piece of crap.
  • Microsoft needs to provide methods where they can collect independent feedback so we can vote apps off the Marketplace. I would rather have 50,000 excellent top notch apps then 100,000,000 mediocre apps. Numbers of apps in your app store are highly overrated.
  • One hundred million?
  • *Pinky to Mouth* 100 meel-yun apps!
  • It's a nice idea, but you'd get app devs getting their buddies to gang up and down vote the competition. That probably already happens, but it there was the opportunity to vote off entirely it would be even worse.
  • Well I think an "abuse" button would be better that way each app could go through an Investigation TBD if it's SPAM or not. 
     
  • LeiChat is right. We already see enough of that shit on the XBLA Indie marketplace and it's way worse than having a bit of spam.
  • No marketplace link.
  • Wait--you want to download the spam app?
  • No...
  • If its a recipe app using Spam. Then I might Spam Fritters are awesome
  • Yes, useless apps annoy me too! I wish Microsoft would make a way to filter out certain apps when browsing the store, like the Chinese language apps, or just make a separate store for each language. I hate flipping through pages of Chinese apps that I don't care about
  • They can't even add a filter to the Xbox market so I don't have to see all the millions of millions of rock band dlc songs that get added every day/week.
  • It's the same Problem in all Stores to get 100k Apps (or even more for Google Play and ITunes) you need to leav trash app's in your store.
    I would like seeing a Button or Option to report Spam and Scam App's to Microsoft.
  • You shouldn't really find any scam apps in the WP Marketplace as their certification process is a lot stricter than Android. In fact, do Google do any sort of certification at all?
  • I see a useless camera app without screenshot nor a trial, sold for 400$. That developer should be legally persecuted...
  • Don't forget those "I am rich" apps. I think I saw one for 1,000 bucks once and thought to myself that they can't possibly be serious.
  • Yalla apps... 'nuff said.
  • Have you seen Derek Miller's reprints? Was looking for a good Michigan Football app since ESPN kept crashing on me and his Michigan Football News is the same junk as every other school app he released.
  • I want a link or button to report apps quickly and easily. Honestly, though, I don't even bother looking at the "New" apps listing, because I've never seen a useful app listed. If I'm looking for something, I just search or get a link from here. I also rely on the Featured list. The "Top" list would be good if I could filter out the games. I think Games should only be listed in a dedicated games listing, actually. I love them, but when I'm on the Featured or Top lists, get rid of them so I can see what useful apps are available.
  • Preach on brother Edmonds!  One thing I like about Amazon's approach is to opt out of the app count war and concentrate on having good apps.  Doesn't always work that way, but they have far less crap than the big boys.
  • I went to a free dev day in London where they were encouraging new devs to publish asap with the chance of a free Lumia handset for "testing". That probably is enough incentive to knock up an app of no real value and submit it for marketplace approval.
    Personally, I'd want to have something more worthwhile to publish before I signed up to the app hub.
    We all need to download these apps (if they don't require access to your personal data) and give them a 1* rating and them delete them. :)
  • Looks like this app posting spree is being caused by MS contest 
  • Unfortunately too many people are suckers for marketing and ignore what is not being said.
    Most of those suckers who will (subliminally) purchase an iPhone/Android due to the marketing about how many apps are on their app store are the same suckers who will only download the "Top 5" apps that are featured on the tv advert.
    Dear Microsoft, Please encourage your devs to produce Quality not Quantity. Thanks.
  • "Who cares? We have over 100,000 apps muahahahaha!" Microsoft be trolling. 
  • They should ban those "I am Rich (but stupid)" apps too...totally worthless!
  • If the apps pass the certification rules then I don't see the issue.
    They might fail these for 2.10 but that's debatable.
    These apps aren't SPAM, they are bad, but I wouldn't call them SPAM. He doesn't even have ads in them. Dev's are capped at 100 free apps so there is a limit any dev can do without opening another account (at least on free apps).
     
     
     
  • It surprising how "crap" people actually release/produce... Microsoft (and others) create such amazing tools to develop amazing apps and people continue to produce useless garbage :( ... it makes so glad I "boycott" Android...
  • Don’t worry. That happens on every marketplace. Of 650 K applications Apple store has - 400 K were not downloaded one single time.
    But yes. I think someone should get rid of all these spam or badly written applications. It’s better to have 200 great applications than 650 000 crApple applications for my opinion.
     
  • I see. Lots of people here have opinion, but unsubstantiated. Maybe it is not useful to some of us, but useful to others. Yalla and others make good stuff. Blame Microsoft for why this happened in the first place. And for those "unuseful" apps for you. We who use those don't care either for your opinions. Post all you want while the developers put effort trying developing for those who care.
     
    How about the spam apps like above. Perhaps he made that way for the purpose of app discovery. Perhaps he lacks the skills and resources to stitch it together for a full blown app. I think it is most likely for app discovery. For a whole app, the recipes are not in the same category and too few.
     
    I believe discretion is the better part of valour.
  • Just wanted to say, Bhavana is a girl/woman. So replace your HE with SHE. ;-)
  • If you search for "VeganCarrot" there is another publisher called Shashank Kartha that has loads of identical single recipe apps.
  • Their last names are similar.
  • Looks delicious :D
  • Obviously a way to get advertising revenue, although I'm not going to download an to be sure. This sort of mass publishing degrades ausers experience of the mp, as if search were not bad enough already. It may just be a lucky oversight, flaw in the approval process, as this sort of duplication is way less common than it used to be.
    Biggest issue is that potentially a whole new market of consumers will be confronted with this sort of thing when wp8 hits. What good is that flash new phone if your search for quality apps is sub par? Another piece of the puzzle that needs some attention, but it's there, it works, MShave bigger fish to fry at the moment I suppose, xBox music for your wp7 for example!
  • giantveggie confirms that there is not a single ad there. Please don't add fuel to the fire. At least people like them whose apps you call spams respond being emailed and try to improve their apps.
  • I've seen plenty of apps (TMZ, redbox, livingsocial, wikipedia) all published by the same user which are basically all the mobile websites within an app container. And of course, with ads. Most users don't realize they are just being navigated to the mobile site. Not spam, but isn't a real app IMO.
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/publishers/Cloud10%20Studios?appid=a7a...
     
    Well, Youtube is the same, isn't it?
  • I personally don't have much of an issue with it, I guess I because I don't encounter it super often. A "Report App" button could be useful, but it may be even better to have the option to block apps (or even a user) from showing up in your search results.
  • If you search for "Jenny" there is another example of a multitude of useless apps. Microsoft really needs some basic quality control as apps such as these devalue the marketplace.