Yesterday, we reported about Apple‘s alleged anti-competitive measures by removing third-party screen-time applications from it’s app store, the company had reportedly restricted or altogether removed certain screen-time and parental control application from the store causing a handful of third-party developers to complain about the act as being a bully and anti-competitive.
The company formally issued a statement in which it explained the reasons behind it’s decisions of removing some certain third-party applications from it’s App Store. The company stated it being due to security and privacy reasons.
The company said it doesn’t want those applications to jeopardize the privacy of iPhone users based on the fact that it had discovered some behaviors which are questionable within those applications. Apple also said it would inform developers of such applications with 30 days grant to remove those issues and update the security issues but when those problems go unfixed, then the applications are either restricted or completely removed.
When we found out about these guideline violations, we communicated these violations to the app developers, giving them 30 days to submit an updated app to avoid availability interruption in the App Store. Several developers released updates to bring their apps in line with these policies. Those that didn’t were removed from the App Store.
Apple made it known that those companies it refers to were using mostly Mobile Device Management which a “Highly Invasive Technology” that enables an application to have excessive access to sensitive information such as the User Location, Application use, Email Accounts, Camera permissions and even Browsing history all which are meant to be personal to every individual users of an iPhone. The non-compliance to these rules gets those applications banned off the platform completely.
