Tweetbot for iOS outs pirate users
A lot of us at TUAW use Tapbots' wonderful Tweetbot iPhone app to feed our mobile Twitter habit. The US$2.99 price tag is apparently off-putting to some iPhone users who want the excellent features of Tweetbot, but would rather pirate the app than pay three measly bucks for it. Gizmodo UK has discovered that Tapbots now has a way to get revenge on those jailbreakers who are pirating the app -- those pirated copies automatically insert the following phrase into the compose field:
A quick search on Twitter shows that the messages appeared to have peaked a couple of days ago and have since tailed off, so either the shamed pirates are now deleting the message and getting on with their evil ways, or someone has figured out how to remove the "offending" string from the pirated version of the app.
Many loyal Tweetbot users are publicly applauding Tapbots' response to piracy, especially since those pirates are chewing up the company's Twitter token allotment. This isn't the first time a developer has tried to shame pirates; Enfour had its plan backfire when it attempted to call out pirates on Twitter and accidentally burned a few valid users of its dictionary apps in the process.
