Tired of antivirus - it's absurd

My app is dropping down like crazy because of some stupid and dishonest antivirus that detects something (maybe StartApp) inside it.
It’s crazy. Why do these stupid antivirus producers penalise us?
The app is not great, but it does not deserve a rating of 2,77 like it is now. It is absolutely unfair and dishonest by antivirus producers.
I decided to put this warning on my description, I hope it will function. What I am sure of, it will drop even more the downloads due to the less weight that come to have some important keywords.
It’s a risk I want to face. This is crazy.
Do the same if you think so.

** Dear users, there is no virus in this app, and no malicious code of any kind. There is only a very common and guaranteed library that provides advertising, thanks to that library this app IS FREE. Unfortunately, some unfair antivirus producers don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) that ads are the only way for independent developers to distribute a free app and get few dollars to buy a pizza. This app has many low ratings because of false virus detections. Ask yourself: is this really the service you want from an antivirus? This trend penalises independent developers, in favour of great industries that can afford in-app purchases. **

Its not crazy. Icon ads and push ads are virus from many users perspective (They work purely based on the fact that no one reads a long EULA and understands what it says). As a user who paid monthly charges due to deceptive push ads for several months, I can say this from my perspective.

Its a shame Icon ads and Push are still allowed in Android Ecosystem.

I may agree about push ads, but I only have icon ads and they:

  1. use bandwidth only when requested by the user
  2. can be deleted
  3. can be not accepted
  4. anyway, they simply ARE NOT VIRUS.

An icon ad is much less disturbing than banners, then, and they use less bandwidth (or even none).
Why are not banners compared to virus? Would any antivirus producer go against AdMob?

No. So they must demonstrate to their users that they are worth something, and being there almost NO VIRUSES on the Android system, they just detect what they can detect. The more they detect, the more they look “useful” to the user.

StartApp and all other ad systems should make something all together to avoid this.

That’s a very good statement. I think I will adapt it for my apps!

I find the best way to combat the stupid anti-virus comments is to ask your users for ratings once they’ve used your app for a while. Most of them will like your app if they’ve come back to it and you can offset your 1 stars with 4 and 5 stars.

You could also put in some sort of a Dialog Box on first launch which states that ‘Thank YOU for downloading my app. I wanted to drop a personal note to let you know that this App neither has any virus nor any malicious content. And this app is also free to use and in order to do, I have included Ads. If you see any Virus warning from my App, please ignore it. I need to put in ads so I can have money to buy a pizza whilst giving you the exciting experience of my hard work. I hope you like my App and rate it based on the quality of the app instead of false warnings.’

Just my opinion. :slight_smile:

EDIT: This won’t fit in a dialog box so you’ll have to make EULA type disclaimer. And you could use this opportunity to let users know about the Ad Types that you use. 2 birds with one stone.

Thats THEIR fault for not reading the EULA.

Thats like saying you buy a crappy house then complain about it because you didn’t read the paper work before hand saying you were being sold a crappy house.

It’s ALL on you, Icon Ads are annoying yeah but push ads…Eh big deal people are going to get ads either way.

This is the only reason, I removed push ads and icon ads from my apps. coz when you have some layman using your app, they don’t understand EULA and stuff. What they were complaining was that they don’t want those ads and leaving bad rating and comments which obviously reduced the overall visibility of app in market. Bad rating and comment has two bad affects:

  1. Reduces the search ranking of your app
  2. Some users on scrolling down the search results may read earlier user comments and decide not to install it.

For me, its better to loose some quick dollars from push/icon ads and stick to banner ads and get more installs and good retention rate.

I do basically this in my splash screen, the EULA, twice in the description of the app and i also give them links to the leadbolt opt out app and site opt out. I also explain that the leadbolt advertising system can set off antiviruses. But it doesn’t matter people simply do not read anything but love to leave horrible reviews and send emails complaining. Then when i explain it to them in a nice way they feel dumb for not reading it and then complain even more.

I still get the “its a virus” reviews of apps that have leadbolt ads.

They argue that the app should never have ads and if it didn’t i would get more downloads. Then say that because of the advertising in the free one they wont buy the 99 cent one. Its seriously hard not to laugh responding to that.

bottom line - if you use advertising users will complain its not free and advertising free.

Funny enough they don’t send hate mail to the tv networks for showing literally more commercials than the amount of time the tv show is on. Would be funny as hell if we did this for our apps. Hell i might just make a video about that and put it on youtube. LOL

Well, you will not get complaints about banner ads - that is one thing.

Showing some interstitials at end of app or during app - will also not get much complaints.

Showing too many interstitials will get complaints.

I have never used push ads and startapp and icon ads etc. - I can somewhat understand the icon ads etc. and startapp - however push ads seem to take away power from the thinking users.

The non-thinking users may not mind push ads - but more likely don’t even know what they are, what’s going on …

But it is a fact that most developers here - if you consider them a thinking group :slight_smile: - will NOT want push ads - as many have attested here.

Myself I am wary of any app that has push ads (I never used to instal these - now I sometimes install them to test but nearly always uninstall them as soon as I can).

I am wary of StartApp and Icon ads - for the housekeeping work required to clean them up - though I suppose Icon ads are probably the cleanest. Regarding bookmarks and search engine replacement as can happen with StartApp - I would not like that as that suggests changes happening in the background which I may not be able to set back to what it was earlier …

However the StartApp and other EULAs are quite reasonable-sounding - and I suspect a large number of users just allow it because they don’t know what’s going on, or they think what the hell I don’t use the browser so let them put in bookmarks etc.

Just from this type of anecdotal evidence you should be clear that anything beyond banner ads and some interstitial ads starts to be seen as intrusive.

So you will get a certain number of folks who are absolutely against them.

The dilemma is that for developers - it seems they are able to get better revenue if they use StartApp type stuff and Airpush type stuff.

Oh yes even the simplest admob banner gets complaints. I actually got one that said i put the admob ad on the bottom of the app so it was closer to their phones physical buttons. When in reality i put it on the bottom to avoid the apps own settings button. LOL

To avoid people complaining about ads IAP unlock for removing ads seems to be at least partially working - they don’t use it, but don’t complain anymore. :slight_smile:

That is an interesting point. However, that might only work to a point. I had used GetJar to remove ads - very few used it - and still complained about ads.

I guess in my case I had interstitials which were pissing off users - so they never got to the banners I guess :slight_smile: Some comments even said that the banner ad is acceptable because developer got to make money but the interstitials were too much (I might have been overpresenting them and so some of the complaints were legitimate).

Scaling down on the overpresentation of interstitials did of course affect revenue - but scaling that back got rid of the comments about ads.

My guess is that most folks don’t think banner ads are extreme - but there wil be the odd reviewer demanding the world of the app developer I guess.

My experience is anyway strange because all these complaints about virus (not ads) come in my most successfull app, while there are much less on the other ones with the same ad methods.
I think that seeing an app with high downloads and low ratings make them feel like Robin Hood (or maybe Neo) and they also want to join the chorus of people that save the world writing “1 star! VIRUS” detected by their free antivirus.

that moment when one of apps i installed on my phone that used leadbolt notif ads, push an antivirus ads. I don’t know is the antivirus apps will detect leadbolt ads as :stuck_out_tongue:

You may be right - I have a similar impression - that negative reviews are not only bad for downloads - but they seem to trigger additional negative reviews.

It is almost like “peer pressure” i.e. when the public is praising an app, a negative opinion-holding user is LESS likely to criticize the app - it takes guts to go against the prevailing wisdom. As there is the risk of being badmouthed by the public for being “stupid that you don’t understand this subtle app”.

In contrast where there already are bad reviews - a user who dislikes it will feel more “with the flow” and feel like when he posts, his sentiment will be validated and seconded by other users.

In addition, there maybe a “mob mentality” thing as well - as well as when the user has some bully-tendencies - someone frustrated from his day job may want to take it out on an app - and where better to do so when an app is already being beaten down by the public - so he joins the crowd in beating your app to a pulp - under cover of public sentiment. Such behavior would be harder to cover with an app that is getting glowing reviews by the general public.

His anger at the app is then likely to be seen as something “wrong with HIM” rather than the app - thus dissuading use of such apps for just anger-venting in such cases.

So this is the complete psychological study of user-aggression in App Store spaces - could be the title of a paper I guess.

So sick of these antivirus apps bringing our ratings and downloads down. I think most users are more educated in what a real “virus, or malware” is and understand the SDK isn’t really a virus. Hopefully more people will be educated as this is affecting us developers! The bottom line is if you use push or icon your SDK will most likley be flagged as virus. Some networks have split up their SDKs so the in app units won’t be flagged as a virus. Leadbolt and AIrpush have split up their SDK.

StartApp really needs to generate random SDK names and namespaces, because it’s really annoying. I can’t stop using StartApp, it’s bringing me sweet money :wink:

yes, StartApp… please do something!
I think it is really absurd to flag icon ads as virus, expecially when they even gently ask for a permission…
Try to contact Google…

I guess it’s not the sdk that triggers the antivrus, it’s the permissions it requires. I am trying out a new sdk from new provider, and got flagged as virus too =X

Which permissions do you think they are?