It came to our attention a while back that there was a fake Bovada app floating around in the Apple store. Fast forward a few months and we start hearing chatter in Reddit's /r/Bovada sub about the Bovada app doing strange things, like showing a bunch of ads while someone was on vacation outside of the United States.
Well, obviously, Bovada is not showing advertisements, for travel companies no less, to its customers. So we decided it was time for some investigative reporting. We found over a DOZEN fake Bovada apps in the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Amazon, and Microsoft App Stores!
We spoke to a rep at the company, and it seems they know of these things, but cannot really do anything about them. I suspect getting the fake apps removed would require certain information no one is willing to provide (just my guess!!).
In any case, we documented all of this information, and these fake apps in a comprehensive article. We just went to update it and noticed that a few had been taken down since we published over a month ago, which is good news, but others still exist and have tens of thousands of downloads, possibly compromising accounts and exposing users to spam, advertisement tracking, and maybe even phishing of passwords!
So we decided we want to spread the word on GPWA, and other places. Here is the link to the full article about Fake Bovada Apps
For those of you who use Bovada and have installed their launching app, that is really just a fancy web browser link that is put on your home-screen. Bovada doesn't have any downloadable apps for sports or casino, and the mobile poker is played via web browser. The only downloadable software is for PC/Mac and related to Bovada Poker, nothing else. (this is covered in more detail in the article)As one of the top-tier online poker sites available to Americans today, Bovada has many dedicated fans. They enjoy playing on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, and so the Bovada app is an often-searched piece of software.
There's just one problem – there is no legitimate Bovada mobile app in any of the app stores that players can use to access the games on their phones or tablets. Yes, you read that right: Any Bovada.lv mobile app you may encounter anywhere other than the official Bovada website is not authorized by the betting site and is, in fact, the creation of shady and possibly criminal entities.
I encourage people who promote Bovada to update their reviews and warn their players about downloading fake apps that could compromise the accounts of their customers.