Yes, I’ll save you the time to read this full article and tell you right off the start that the Android application Tik Tube is a scam. You’ll never make an easy $500 in 20 minutes just by simply watching TikTok videos, and certainly not with Tik Tube.
The first time I’ve seen a mention about Tik Tube is via an YouTube advertisement. It was a guy that said you could easily earn $500 in a matter of minutes just by watching videos. My scam alert sensor activated because by default I don’t trust anyone, and that seemed to be fishy. I told myself I should check it out though, to see what’s the catch.
Tik Tube Scam – the website
First of all, I checked their website (mentioned from the Google Play listing) and this is what it looks like pretty much:
Spam triggers here:
- Both links to iOS and Android from their website simply point to the same page you’re on, which is stepsfun.com/game_details?id=1
- Second trigger is their privacy policy. Pretty much generic privacy policy text with no particular details. They didn’t even bother to remove this sentence from the bottom of the page, which means this text was generated elsewhere: “This privacy policy page was created at privacypolicytemplate.net and modified/generated by App Privacy Policy Generator” – nothing wrong if you use a privacy policy generator, as long as you modify something and don’t just copy/paste. No details on what happens with your data, no details about payments, no details about anything of importance.
- The company behind Tik Tube shows as StepsFun TT VA – no About Us page describing where they’re from, what they do and so on. Nothing on the internet about the company as well, so yes, they seem very “trustworthy”.
- Copyright notice is 2022, this just tells you how attentive to details they are.
Tik Tube Scam – the Google Play listing
Next, I checked their Google Play listing in detail.
Other scam triggers here:
- The app description is only 1 line of text: “Tik Tube is a very cool application that allows you to watch interesting videos”. I mean I get minimalistic descriptions, but this is outrageous. No mention about them paying you for watching videos, no mention of payments in the screenshots either. This was done to trick Google into believing the app is legit and pass their automated checks.
- Under App Support they mention the site I studied above, but also an address which looks like this: “香港新界太和太和邨大埔太和路2號宝雅苑A座逸和阁” This is a Hong Kong address, which roughly translates to “Yi Wo House, Block A, Po Nga Court, No. 2 Tai Wo Road, Tai Wo Estate, New Territories, Hong Kong” – this assuming it is a real address. It looks like an apartment in a building. And indeed, if you click on it Google opens Maps to a location that looks like this:
Looks like the headquarters of a multi-million dollar company, right? Because Tik Tube for Android has roughly 1,000,000 installs, and given how easy it is to earn $500 on the platform, they must have paid $500,000,000 by now, right? If this doesn’t trigger your scam alert sensor, not sure what does. Well, maybe the actual app will.
Tik Tube Scam – the Android app
Tik Tube is still currently active on Google Play. I’m pretty sure a lot of users already reported it (as I did), but Google takes its time to take action in some cases. I’m still intrigued why they’ve let this garbage of an app to be published in the first place, I assume it has to do with some automated checks that are too loose maybe?
After you install Tik Tube for Android on your phone, you’ll see a pretty basic app that starts. What you have to do to “earn” those big bucks? Well, just watching some videos and picking the one you like. This is actually how you earn some sort of “coins” that can be exchanged for “real” cash, by picking which videos you like:
I’m telling you, to earn $500 you have to basically collect around 5,000 points or coins. For watching a series of videos you get a few hundred coins, so in less than 10 minutes you’ll get enough points to try and cash out the fake $500.
You can also double the coins you earn after watching videos, by watching ads. The funny thing is that even if you don’t want to double your coins, you still have to watch an ad, so they’ll show ads as often as possible no matter what you do:
Here is where the Tik Tube scam is revealed however, when you go to the Redeem tab and try to cash out the money you earned. You can choose to cash out via Paypal, PicPay, Coinbase and a few other platforms. You can pick whatever you want, it’s a scam so you won’t get too far while trying to withdraw. The moment you click on the Redeem button you see the conditions for the withdrawal:
Supposedly, the redeeming process is a 3 step one. After you’ve collected enough coins, you start the redeem, then go to a phase called Order Check, then finalize the withdrawal with an Order transaction process. But you’ll never get pass the Order check step, because this is the step where they actually ask you for money. That’s right, in order to pay you $500 they say you have to pay $0.99 in order to unlock the withdrawal. Major scam warning. Here’s what they actually claim:
” Congratulations on getting the order, you need to activate the order, please watch the video 25 times within 24 hours to activate, otherwise the order will be invalid”
Don’t despair though, they have a faster “solution”:
“If your points are not enough, you can pay a USD 0.99 service fee, and the order will be activated for you immediately (73% of users choose)”.
So yes, putting aside the grammar and spelling errors, they tell you that in order to be paid for the money you earned you need to:
- either watch 25 more videos in the next 24 hours, OR
- pay $0.99 to process the order.
Thing is, no matter which of these options you choose, you will NEVER receive any money from Tik Tube. It is a total scam, with some sort of pyramidal scheme behind. Why am I saying this? Because I’ve seen other people claiming that they’ve won money via Tik Tube, and show fake proofs. Those people are paid to advertise the Tik Tube scam so the best thing to do is stay away from this app completely.
So how can you help? The first thing you can do is be sure you don’t install Tik Tube. If you do however, be sure to add a review on Google Play, warning other users to stay away from it. Even if you don’t install the app, you can still contribute to take it down by reporting it. You can read this article on How to report a scam app such as Tik Tube.
