Articles about App Store

A highly popular anti-adware tool in the Mac App Store "surreptitiously steals your browsing history", alleges a security researcher. "All your data are belong to China!", as he puts it.

Patrick Wardle conducted research into Adware Doctor -- one of the most popular paid-for apps in the App Store -- after concerns were raised by another security researcher. His research "uncovered blatant violations of user privacy and complete disregard of Apple's App Store Guidelines", including the theft and sharing of browsing history with a Chinese server.

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Apple has announced that all apps submitted to the App Store must have a privacy policy, including those apps which are undergoing beta testing.

The change is due to come into force on October 3, and after this date any app lacking a privacy policy that lets users know how their data is being used faces ejection from the App Store.

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Facebook bought Onavo and its VPN tool back in 2013, and ever since there have been concerns about how the social network uses the tool to gather data -- even when it is disabled.

Now Apple -- itself not a stranger to allegations of privacy violations --  has taken objections to the way Facebook sucks up data from its users through the Ovano Protect VPN app. The iPhone-maker warned Facebook that it was violating its rules on data collection and suggested that the company might want to voluntarily pull the app before it was forcibly removed from the App Store.

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Apple has announced that it is removing apps from its affiliate program. The change means that people will no longer receive commission for iOS and Mac apps.

Having once enabled sites to earn 7 percent commission for app sales, Apple then dropped this to just 2.5 percent. As of October 1, no commission will be paid at all as Apple says the App Store does a good enough job of increasing app discovery.

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People sometimes forget that when the first-ever iPhone launched in 2007, there was no App Store. Believe it or not, Apple's smartphone was limited to the apps with which it came -- hardly "smart." In fact, Steve Jobs famously didn't want third-party apps on the iPhone at all -- the man was a genius, but not always. Ultimately, the App Store was added in 2008 despite Jobs' initial push against it. This move changed the computer industry forever.

This month, the Apple App Store reaches an impressive milestone -- a 10th Birthday. This day is important for three groups -- Apple (of course), but more importantly, consumers and developers. Apple has made billions of dollars from the App Store, but third party developers have as well -- the company has literally transformed some devs into millionaires. Consumers have benefited from high-quality applications too. You may not remember, but before the iPhone came along, mobile apps were absolute garbage.

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Apple has tweaked its App Store policies, closing a loophole that made it possible for developers to gather data from phone contacts and then sell or share that data without consent.

Until very recently app developers have been able to ask for permission to access users' address books and then use this permission to gather data about contacts. But with the latest policy change -- introduced with no announcement -- Apple has clamped down on this practice in the name of privacy.

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Apple has updated its developer guidelines, making it clear that apps that overtly or covertly mine for cryptocurrencies are simply not welcome in the App Store.

The clamp down covers iOS devices, and it has only recently been introduced. The ban means that iPhones and iPads cannot be used to mine for cryptocurrencies, unless the processing is carried out in the cloud. It's not clear how big a problem mining apps have been, and iOS hardware would seem rather underpowered for the task.

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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says that Apple has stopped approving updates for its mobile app on a worldwide basis.

He says that it coincides with Russia implementing a block on Telegram, and it means there have been no updates rolling out to users anywhere in the world for a month and a half. Apple has said nothing about the apparent update block, and the lack of transparency has forced Durov to go public.

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