elisatems wrote:
I think you're painting with an awfully broad brush there.
LOL! You have no idea! 😄
First of all, I'm not singling you out in particular. This is just becoming a popular thread. When anyone posts a reply, it will be read by many thousands of people. If I know that most of those people are misinformed, and they most certainly are in this case, then I may reply to "the masses" using you as a proxy.
Being able to effectively evaluate, install, and maintain 3rd party apps is quite rare. I even write a User Tip on the subject. If a company can afford to literally paint the internet in ads, then their product will sell, well into the millions. It doesn't matter if it works, if it's a scam, or if it's straight up malware. If you can afford the ads, you will soon be able to afford the yacht. This has been proven time and time again. But honest, small developers, people just trying to pay the rent and maybe get a little bit ahead? Those people get software piracy, cyber-stalkers, online harassment, malicious and libellous web sites dedicated to them, you name it. I'm not making this up. All of this to get maybe 5% of customers to buy something.
Now, @Barney-15E's comment that an app that doesn't ask for an admin password can't do anything too malicious (assuming it isn't SUID, which is easily checked for) is certainly true, and this is one reason I'm partial to Unix-based systems like MacOS over something like Windows. But it could still damage *my* files or render them unreadable.
It goes beyond that. Apple has setup an entire infrastructure of developer signatures. Any developer can pay $99 to get access, but if they release anything malicious, then Apple can shut them down right away. This happens all the time. But any app that is able to not get shut down for years is probably not going to be malicious. It may be junk. It may be a scam. It might also damage your files and render them unreadable. Such apps are very popular. But signed apps won't be malicious.
As to the "Levels" on this site, well I'm not terribly familiar with this community. Who sets those levels? Who awards the points? What are they based on?
Apple setup the levels. Users like you award the points. Here is a description of how it works: How to use Apple Support Communities
Mind you, I'm not specifically distrusting anyone here, I'm just fairly new to this site and trying to learn how it works.
This site is very heavily moderated by Apple. No one is going to get 100,000 points, or reach level 10 out of 10, unless their advice has helped an awful lot of people. Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes they miss something. There aren't any bots here, just humans. But if there is a consensus on something, then you can trust it.