Fake ‘Apple’ App ‘I Sea’, Fatal Deception Could Have Resulted In Death

Recently, an app by Singapore-based firm “Grey Group” received an award at the Cannes Lions conference in France for what the organizers judged to be a promising tool to help those who are desperately in need. The app was meant to help migrant refugees fleeing war zones in Syria by tracking them while adrift at sea and sending the information to the Migrant Offshore Air Station (Moas) based in Malta. As it turns out, the app did no such thing and might have caused fatal misunderstandings. As a result, the app was pulled from Apple’s App Store and Moas has severed connections with the firm for good.

According to the Daily Mail, the app called “I Sea” received a bronze award during the Cannes Lions conference and was praised by critics for the service it claimed to provide the thousands of refugees that are fleeing across the Mediterranean towards Europe. However, not only was the product only in its testing phase, it was marketed as a finished version. This prompted Apple to consider the app as a product of dishonest marketing practices and therefore removed it indefinitely.

The app was marketed as being able to track refugee boats in real-time via satellite imagery, which was considered incredible by many critics. When the app was tested however, it only showed static ocean images and didn’t even update the image at all.

A Twitter user with the handle name SwiftOnSecurity was one of the first to notice the problem and Tweeted about it.

"Note that I intuitively knew this app was fake within 20 seconds of using it. It screams unfinished interface mock-up, doesn't act right," the user wrote.

CNET reached out to “Grey Group” to get their side of the story and a representative told them that the app was real.

"The I Sea app is real," the representative said. "We said it was in a testing stage and they have some satellite issues to work out. For some reason, a developer unknown to us has pushed the story that it is fake or a hoax."