Fake Spotify app invades Marketplace–is Marketplace Certification sleeping?

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It is clearly against Marketplace rules to violate the trademark of other companies, but this is exactly what khanamish did when he posted his “Spotify app”, which appears to be simply a collection of links, and used the company’s official logo to boot.

To add insult to injury he charges $0.99 with no free trial for the pleasure of not being able to access any of the services one would expect from the Spotify app.

At WMPoweruser.com we walk a fine line between appreciating unofficial apps which give us access to services which do not have official apps, like the Pandora, YouTube or Onion apps for example, and of course being outraged when an app merely rips off other companies and users.

We have no hesitation in calling Khanamish’s app a scam, preying on users trying to get Spotify service where there is no official coverage.  I would have hoped the Marketplace certification process would protect users from being exploited by this, but what use are those when they are arbitrarily enforced?

With Windows Phone we exchanged freedom for security. Today as a Windows Phone 7 user I feel somewhat less safe downloading apps from Marketplace. Microsoft needs to do better.

Via WPCentral.com

More about the topics: marketplace, scam, spotify, windows phone 7.5

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