iPhone app review protection

Does anyone know if there are rules against rating your own app in the app store? I would assume that most开发者_StackOverflow people would give their own app a 5 star rating if there were no rules - but maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone know for sure?

Sure you are a developer, but because Apple does not allow you to purchase free copies of your app and review, you are also a paying customer. And in Apple's customer user agreement, you are entitled to review anything you purchase.

It's probably not the most ethical thing, but just be aware that if you actually write a review, people can see what other reviews you have written and put two-and-two together to figure out that it's the developer writing reviews.

Most of the crApps out there do this using 50 different iTunes accounts and it's rather deceitful IMHO, at least on that scale.

Something like that would be covered in the User Agreement which is under NDA so it might be hard to get a definite answer.

I did read of a case where an App developer was banned for making fraudulent reviews and ratings which meant his 1600+ Apps were removed. Throughout the forums there were many accusations of other developers doing the exact same thing in a smaller scale that were never banned. So in a nut shell you can get banned for it, but it could be common practice amongst some App developers, just don't get caught.

Look at it this way: Either there's a lot of ratings, and a single rating by yourself won't make a big impact, or you're the only rating, and people will look at only a single rating and not think it's representative enough.

I don't think there's any advantages that outweigh the fact that it's bad form.