App-solutely Modded: Surveying Modded App Market Operators and Original App Developers

Abstract

Modded apps are unofficial versions of apps that have had their code or metadata modified by an unauthorised developer or third-party. Modded apps are typically available in third-party app markets and enable premium features without payment of a fee, game cheats, modified or removed ads, etc. Users are enticed by the modded features to install unsafe outdated versions of popular apps [29]. We present the results of the first survey-based study of 14 Android and 5 iOS modded app market operators and the effect of modded apps on 717 original app developers. We find modded market operators have economic incentives to break copyright law and make it difficult to file complaints. They perform little to no security testing of the apps they host. We updated our ModZoo dataset [29] and sent 27k affected app developers a personalised digest of the analysis results. We find modded markets benefit from the original app developers’ intellectual property while affected developers incur revenue losses from purchases, advertising, increased server calls, etc. and negative impacts from increased errors, support requests and reputation damage. We also study DMCA compliance of the top 23 modded app markets and confirm our survey findings: DMCA copyright claims are unusable at scale. Finally, we propose possible solutions to the modding problem.