iOS AppStore - Trademark violations
Hey there, Following the great news that Onion Browser for iOS finally became free, I took a look at Apple AppStore to see what other apps are there that are pretending to be "the" Tor for iOS, and unfortunately found plenty that use Tor logo or brand name to promote themselves. Most of which are not free (as in beer / nor as in freedom) and seem to be even injecting ads to users. The worst part... some of them have hundreds of 5 star reviews. So I collected a bunch of them under this ticket: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/20873 However I couldn't find the right component to file the ticket under. So I thought I'd drop a line to the mailing list and let people know this exists, in case the ones who need to deal with these issues read the mailing list. Should we have a legal component on trac? Enjoy the weekend! -- Nima 0X58C4B928A3E218F6 | @mrphs "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" --Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Nima Fatemi wrote:
The worst part... some of them have hundreds of 5 star reviews.
It's tricky to convince people to not use apps that have a lot of installs & 5-star ratings, since most people rely on that kind of 'social proof' to pick what's safest/easiest. And app devs who inject ads and buy reviews aren't on end-users' radar, unfortunately =( There's a bunch on Android too: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=tor&c=apps&hl=en -- Accept what you cannot change, and change what you cannot accept. PGP: 0x03cf4a0ab3c79a63
There are almost no signals that Onion Browser is a vetted project. I think it would be good to change this. Orbot gets pointed to the Tor project page, is integrated in to the Facebook app and signals it's legitimacy. From there, people will find OrFox. On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 12:48 PM Griffin Boyce <griffin@cryptolab.net> wrote: Nima Fatemi wrote:
The worst part... some of them have hundreds of 5 star reviews.
It's tricky to convince people to not use apps that have a lot of installs & 5-star ratings, since most people rely on that kind of 'social proof' to pick what's safest/easiest. And app devs who inject ads and buy reviews aren't on end-users' radar, unfortunately =( There's a bunch on Android too: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=tor&c=apps&hl=en -- Accept what you cannot change, and change what you cannot accept. PGP: 0x03cf4a0ab3c79a63 _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
Thanks Nima, In the past, I've gotten reasonable response form Apple and Google when sending trademark complaints against apps that misuse Tor's logo or name to make people believe falsely that they're sponsored by or affiliated with Tor. I would be happy to follow-up on these cases and those Griffin identified on Android. --Wendy On 12/03/2016 03:28 PM, Nima Fatemi wrote:
Hi, I've sent complaints through the App Store in each case that was misusing the Tor logo or clearly trying to self-identify as "Tor" (not all of those in these lists, but a large number). An additional challenge is that many apps that don't otherwise misuse our logo use a check.torproject.org screenshot, showing a large onion logo, even if the app itself uses a distinct logo. I'd like to hear others thoughts on whether we should discourage this use even if the app is in fact using Tor (or how we might police whether these apps are in fact using Tor). --Wendy On 12/03/2016 04:36 PM, Wendy Seltzer wrote:
participants (5)
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Griffin Boyce -
Nima Fatemi -
Wendy Seltzer -
Wendy Seltzer -
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