Apple Pulled the No. 2 US App and Proved Rewarded UA Has a Trust Problem

On Monday, Apple removed Freecash from the App Store. The app had 60 million registered users, a 4.7-star rating from over 150,000 reviews, and hit No. 2 in the US App Store in February. It was also, according to TechCrunch and security researchers at Malwarebytes, collecting users' race, religion, sexual orientation, and biometric data while marketing itself as a way to "make money just by scrolling TikTok."

The removal matters beyond the app itself. Freecash was a major node in the rewarded user acquisition pipeline that gaming studios have increasingly relied on. Its parent company, Berlin-based Almedia, spent $100 million on user acquisition in 2026 and partnered with over 500 advertisers across 100+ countries. When Apple flipped the switch, it didn't just kill an app. It collapsed a distribution channel that a meaningful chunk of mobile gaming UA budgets were flowing through.

The version of Freecash its advertisers saw

If you work in mobile UA, the Freecash pitch was compelling. The platform's offerwall model meant users completed specific actions (played games to certain levels, made in-app purchases, signed up for services) in exchange for real rewards. For advertisers, the value prop was strong. AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index found that over one-third of leading UA sources are now rewarded platforms. A separate survey from adjoe showed 82% of mobile game developers said rewarded UA outperformed traditional channels.

The performance numbers backed it up. Offerwall users show 45.8% higher Day 1 retention, 86.1% higher Day 7, and 71.7% higher Day 14 compared to users from traditional ad formats, according to industry benchmarks from MAF. eCPMs for offerwalls run between $200 and $1,700+, the highest of any mobile ad format. For gaming studios fighting rising CPIs across Meta and Google, rewarded UA looked like the rational alternative.

Freecash sat at the center of that ecosystem. And most of the advertisers using it probably didn't spend much time thinking about how the platform acquired those 60 million users in the first place.

How Freecash actually acquired those users

This is where it gets uncomfortable for anyone in the UA supply chain.

Freecash's downloads surged from 876,000 in October 2025 to 5.5 million by January 2026. That growth was driven largely by TikTok ads promising users they could "make money just by scrolling TikTok," which was not what the app actually did. Users earned small rewards for playing games, completing surveys, and handing over personal data. Lots of personal data.

Malwarebytes flagged Freecash as collecting information about users' race, religion, sex life, sexual orientation, health, and biometrics. The app wasn't a rewards platform in any honest sense. It was functioning as a data broker, matching game developers with users willing to install and spend money on mobile games, while harvesting sensitive information on the side.

And the company had been through this before. Apple removed an earlier version of Freecash in June 2024. Almedia got back into the App Store by rebranding an existing app called "Rewards" through a different developer entity, 256 Rewards Ltd, registered in Cyprus. TechCrunch reported this as a common, though rule-breaking, tactic for circumventing App Store bans.

Apple cited guidelines 3.1.2(a) and 2.3.1: the rules against scamming, bait-and-switch tactics, and misleading marketing. The removal happened after TechCrunch contacted Apple for comment during its investigation.

The UA supply chain had a blind spot the size of a No. 2 app

I think the honest assessment is that the rewarded UA industry had a willful blind spot about where its users were coming from. I'm not saying every advertiser using Freecash knew about the data practices, because most of them almost certainly didn't. But the incentive structures made it easy not to ask.

For a gaming studio, the choice came down to spending $8-12 per install on Meta with increasingly opaque targeting, or running an offerwall campaign through Freecash and getting users who were demonstrably more engaged. That seemed obvious. What didn't get scrutinized was the pipeline feeding users into those offerwalls.

It's a bit like discovering your best-performing affiliate channel was driving all its traffic through fake reviews. The conversions were real. The users were real. But the acquisition method that made those numbers possible was compromised the entire time. And once someone pulls the plug, you lose both the volume and the confidence that the data was ever clean.

This isn't unique to Freecash, either. The broader rewarded UA category has operated in a gray area on Apple's platform for years. Apple first cracked down on incentivized installs back in 2018, banning offerwall-driven CPI and CPE campaigns. Then, roughly a year ago, Apple updated its guidelines to seem more accommodating of rewarded platforms. Freecash CEO Moritz Holländer noted that "we and the whole industry finally felt safe." Which makes the overnight removal particularly disorienting for everyone else in the space.

But "feeling safe" on a platform where the gatekeeper can delist you without notice is a category of business risk that doesn't show up in your ROAS calculations. And when that gatekeeper finds evidence of data harvesting and misleading marketing in the supply chain you depend on, the dislisting happens fast.

Where this leaves mobile UA teams right now

If you're running rewarded campaigns on iOS, here's the practical situation.

First, audit your offerwall partners for data practices. Find out what data they collect from users, how they disclose it, and whether their App Store listing matches what the app actually does. If you can't get clear answers within a week, that's your answer.

Second, check your iOS UA mix. If more than 20-25% of your install volume comes from a single rewarded source, you have a concentration risk that the Freecash situation just made very concrete.

One platform enforcement decision shouldn't be able to materially damage your install pipeline.

Third, recognize that Apple's enforcement here was reactive. Freecash operated with a rebranded developer account for months before TechCrunch's investigation prompted Apple to act. There are probably other apps in the ecosystem with similar data practices that haven't been investigated yet. The floor can shift again without warning.

Apple has been making bigger moves across its advertising ecosystem recently, from rolling out ads in Maps to tightening privacy enforcement. The pattern is consistent: Apple wants more control over how advertising works on its platform, and rewarded UA sits right in the crosshairs of that agenda.

The question rewarded UA hasn't answered yet

Nobody in this space seems to want to engage directly with whether the retention numbers that make rewarded UA look so good are partly a function of the aggressive, sometimes misleading user acquisition feeding the top of the funnel. Users who actively choose to try an app for a reward might naturally be more engaged. But users who were told they could "make money scrolling TikTok" and ended up playing mobile games for pennies while their biometric data was collected are a different cohort entirely. The industry benchmarks don't distinguish between the two.

I'd expect at least two or three more rewarded platforms to face App Store scrutiny by Q4 2026, once the press follows TechCrunch's investigative blueprint here. The story writes itself: find a top-charting rewards app, check what data it collects, email Apple for comment, watch the removal happen in real time.

I don't have a definitive answer on whether the retention data holds up once you strip out the problematic acquisition channels. It's possible the numbers are perfectly sound. It's also possible that the performance metrics the entire rewarded UA pitch is built on are partially inflated by practices Apple just called misleading. Either way, it seems like the kind of thing worth investigating before you allocate next quarter's budget based on benchmarks from a platform that no longer exists.

By Notice Me Senpai Editorial