Lure
Name: Lure
Owned By: RepresentLY Inc
Category: Books
Operating System: IOS
Available for download: Yes
Desktop version: No
Approximate release date: 2017
Age Rating*: Rated 17+ for the following:
- Infrequent/mild horror/fear themes
- Infrequent/mild mature/suggestive themes
- Infrequent/mild profanity or crude humor
- Infrequent/mild sexual content and nudity
Brief Description*: Get hooked on exciting, bite-sized chat stories that are filled with romantic, thrilling, and scary titles! Explore Lure’s library of professionally written stories.
*Information from the App Store
- Inappropriate content (sexualized and inappropriate content)
On Lure users follow a story told as if you were watching someone’s text message log. These stories are often about inappropriate content, such as sending nudes, hooking up with teachers, having sex with a neighbor, and more.
- Access to camera (device camera)
Lure does not access your camera.
- Access to contacts (on the device)
Lure does not let you connect with anyone on the app.
- Connect with strangers (ability to)
Users cannot connect with anyone on Lure.
- Cyberbullying opportunities
Because you cannot connect with anyone on the app, cyberbullying is unlikely.
- Business accounts
Lure is not for businesses.
- Ability to send inappropriate images
Lure does not access your camera so users cannot send inappropriate images.
- Collects user’s information
Lure may use data to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies including purchase, usage data, and identifiers. Additionally other data may be collected that is not linked to your identity including purchases, usage data, other data, identifiers, and diagnostics.
Reviewed By: Ryan
As of July 2021, the Lure app is now rated 17+ for the content. This is a more accurate app rating than its previous 12+ rating.
Lure is a “Chat Fiction” app that allows the reader to follow a story told as if you were watching someone’s text message log. The stories are broken into four categories: “Romance, horror, comedy, and mystery.” The stories I chose to read were in the Trending Stories and Staff Picks section.
Within the first few minutes of opening the first “story,” I found sexualized content. In the story, a boy was asking a girl for her to send him a picture of herself. He then sent her several eggplant emojis to encourage her.
The second story I scrolled through was called “Professor Secrets” and its blurb states: “Hooking up with a sexy professor… is this an absolute dream come true or a nightmare?” That story was about a student unknowingly having sex with her professor in college.
The next story I read was “Neighbor’s Help” which had 376,000 views. This story was about a woman that wanted her new neighbor to help her flip her new mattress because the other side was “firmer” and in return, he could “sleep on it.” Then, she sent him an image you can’t see unless you subscribed. Subscription packages were: “3-day free trial, 1 month for $2.50 per week, or 1 year for $1.04 a week.” I did the 3-day free trial to view, then canceled so I wouldn’t be charged. The image was of a woman in lingerie on a bed. Continuing on in the story, she then asks if he has condoms, and it continues from there.
The next story I partly read was titled “Naughty Principal” and had 393,000 views. The blurb for this story is “When high school teacher, Paul, confiscates a student’s phone, he discovers many pictures of the student with a woman.” The woman turns out to be the assistant principal, who reported she hooked up with the student when she was drunk and didn’t know he was a student.
The last story I scrolled through was titled “My Substitute Teacher” which was a story about a student having a crush on her substitute and dressing in a short skirt to “bend over his desk and show him a bit of my undeniable cleavage.”
Currently, Lure is only available for IOS, but there are others that are similar for Android devices; there are other story apps and platforms that will have similar fiction content.
I would not recommend Lure for anyone under 18 years old.