Digital snake oil: FDA and unregulated smartphone ‘health’ apps

By Christopher Thielen on June 3, 2013

The Verge carries this story about the growing problem of smartphone apps advertising unsubstantiated health effects:

In 2009, when Apple’s App Store was just over a year old, an app popped up that seemed too good to be true. AcneApp claimed to treat zits by shining alternating red and blue light out of a user’s iPhone screen, and boasted that it was created by a board-certified dermatologist … [as] it turns out, the dream of fighting acne with a pocket computer was indeed too good to be true. Two years after AcneApp was introduced, the US Federal Trade Commission fined AcneApp and a similar rival product, AcnePwner, a collective $15,000, stating that they both made unsubstantiated scientific claims.

Read more at the original article.