In spite of Apple’s infamously draconian review process for apps trying to snag one of the coveted slots in its App Store, every once in a while an app finds some sneaky way to slide through. That’s the case for Doxcy, an app that billed itself as a simple dice-rolling game, while secretly giving users free access to countless movies from various streaming apps behind the scenes.
Gizmodo first caught wind of the game from a Twitter thread describing how some children on TikTok were sharing a passcode in order to access the app’s covert video cache. Without much searching, we were able to find some of the clips discussing that passcode—literally just “7777″—for ourselves. After popping that string of numbers into the search bar at the top of the app, it immediately flipped from a basic dice game into a video player with dozens of pilfered movies and shows from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others. And like most sketchy apps out there, it’s littered with a ton of ads.
While Apple hasn’t responded to Gizmodo’s response for comment about the app, the company wordlessly yanked the program from its App Store shortly after we reached out.
“The reason for making this app is that when I face a choice often get stuck a situation , hoping to help people like me,” read the app’s original description. It then linked to two pages describing the app’s privacy policy and “terms of use,” which list the app’s developer at a “qq.com,” email address, which is a Chinese-language web portal owned and operated by Tencent. The app’s description doesn’t offer any sort of hint that this app does anything but… roll some dice.
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Despite the fact that Apple’s app review guidelines blatantly prohibit devs from submitting any apps that house “hidden, dormant, or undocumented features,” Doxcy isn’t the first case we’ve seen sneaking features past iOS review—and onto the phones of unsuspecting customers. One recent analysis by The Washington Post found that 20 of the 1,000 top ranking apps in the App Store. Some of these apps, like Doxcy, were designed to sneak in software that users typically aren’t aware that they’re downloading. For the most part, though, these aren’t secret movie-streaming sites, but are programs designed to either drain battery from an iOS user’s device or dollars from their wallets.
Though the app might have been yanked from the App Store, Doxcy is still alive and well on the Google Play store, where it’s been reviewed more than 1,500 times. That said, we can’t recommend anyone should try downloading this app for all sorts of reasons; it’s slow, scammy, and if its privacy policy is to be believed, also littered with data-hoovering trackers that will send details about your phone to dozens of companies. Ultimately, if you want to get your Rick and Morty (or any other program) fix, you’re better off actually subscribing to the streaming service where it’s available.
