
Apple Defends Decision to Remove Parental Control Apps - digighoul
https://digit.fyi/apple-parental-control-apps/
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terracatta
I find the decision of the scorned developers to file with the European
Union’s competition office amusing considering the Union's incredibly strong
stance on individual data privacy.

iPhones contain so much personal data on-device that Apple is absolutely
responsible for protecting that data from illegitimate access. Using MDM which
is clearly intended for enterprise management is an illegitimate use-case.
Period.

The argument that their ability to use MDM APIs in the past and earn revenue
due to a gap in Apple's vigilance dictates that they should be able to
continue unimpeded is a logical fallacy.

Apple is under no obligation to offer unfettered API access to these companies
just because they were filling a market need that Apple didn't want to pursue.
You can tell if Apple wasn't under a market demand obligation to offer MDM to
enterprises, they would cut that too.

One of the value props of the iPhone and the iOS ecosystem is that Apple
exerts this level of control and editorializing on the platform. The result of
which is easily seen when comparing the quantity of data mining apps on
Android vs iOS.

I'm sure if I was one of these scorned developers, I would feel abused even
victimized by Apple. Unfortunately that is a biased perspective. Apple is
doing the right thing for consumers and end-users by blocking these apps.

The reporting on this was atrocious and seems to be a result of the recent
competitive chatter about sandboxed computing platforms like iOS. Broader
discussions around anti-competitive behavior on these platforms are needed,
but this wasn't the poster-child.

~~~
jimmaswell
Whatever Europe's crazy data privacy laws, it's ridiculous they'd apply to the
case of a parent keeping track of their kids. The kid's right to wander into
crazy elsagate videos and have covert online conversations with predators
unsupervised is more important than the parent's right to protect their kid,
and Apple is justified in ripping the monitoring capability out of parents'
hands? Is that what you're saying?

Hopefully the parents either switch to Android if such a thing is still
possible on Android or just get them flip phones with no data plan intended
only for emergency calls. Where they can get a list of sent/received calls at
the end of the month from the cellphone company at least, I assume.

~~~
hbosch
> The kid's right to wander into crazy elsagate videos and have covert online
> conversations with predators unsupervised is more important than the
> parent's right to protect their kid, and Apple is justified in ripping the
> monitoring capability out of parents' hands? Is that what you're saying?

No one is saying that. Just like privacy laws don’t exist to protect encrypted
hard drives full of pedophilia. The right to privacy does NOT enable or
endorse deviancy or illicit behavior! At all! Privacy is a human right, not an
_adult_ right.

Kids do deserve to have an assumption that when they are texting with their
friends that their parents aren’t watching them. Especially teenagers. What
about the young boy in a conservative Christian family who is struggling with
his sexual identity? What about the young girl who is trying to learn how to
report her abusive family members? These are the reasons why children’s
privacy are important. Young people need their own secure places to express
themselves and form an identity — that doesn’t happen, thankfully, under
parental supervision.

That said, of course it’s a parent’s job to protect their children. But spying
on a personal device like a cell phone is oppressive and paranoid.

~~~
jimmaswell
I went over abuse reporting/sexual identity in another comment, but to your
point about right to privacy, I don't think there's a reasonable absolute
right to privacy as a kid, at least not before maybe high school or late
middle school. This doesn't mean no alone time with friends, but at least at
elementary school age, internet should be monitored, and phone location
tracking is certainly reasonable before high school.

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ghostly_s
This is...a very weird situation.

> “Over the last year, we became aware that several of these parental control
> apps were using a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device
> Management, or MDM.

> “MDM gives a third-party control and access over a device and its most
> sensitive information, including user location, app use, email accounts,
> camera permissions, and browsing history.”

They make this sound like MDM is some scary third-party attack on their
platform, neglecting to point out MDM is a system _they designed_. There's
always been some schizophrenia from Apple around MDM (publicize new control
features to admins in one release, add a big scary vague user-facing warning
when that feature is actually used in the next release), but their general
stance has consistently been that you, as a company, have a right to enforce
whatever restrictions are available on devices used by your employees so long
as _you own them_ , and so long as you accept whatever user-disclosure
features they decide to implement. Likewise, you have a right to enforce a
more limited suite of controls on your employee's personal devices, so long as
it's all opt-in.

I would presume any parent intending to enforce restrictions on a child's
device also purchased that device. So Apple's stance here is really that
parents should have less control over their children's devices than employers
have over those of their employees? Or are they really talking about some
exploit of the MDM framework? Because the way it's phrased here clearly seems
to be framing MDM in general as a nefarious tool.

~~~
xoa
> _So Apple 's stance here is really that parents should have less control
> over their children's devices than employers have over those of their
> employees?_

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong as I haven't used any of these apps,
but I thought the point here is that it's not the parents running an MDM
server. I mean, _I_ personally have long made use of MDM and profiles on iOS
devices for myself and family, it's super useful (and necessary for some
things like using S/MIME certs in native Mail). But I've done it via actual
MDM, myself (you can also do a lot via simple distributed one shot profiles
made with the free Apple Configurator software). There is no 3rd party
involved.

It sounds like here that it was 3rd party apps/services that were making use
of MDM functionality. "On behalf of parents" sure, but there's still a
fundamentally different relationship and set of expectations for loading an
app via the general App Store vs specifically enrolling a device/loading a
profile from an employer someone has contractual agreements with, or someone
running an MDM server themselves on their own behalf. There isn't really any
way around the fact that MDM offers enormous power over devices, much of which
happens without any user interaction or much (if any) exposure via the GUI.
That's much of the point of it after all. That power certainly offers avenues
for abuse that are different in scope.

I'm sure many of the 3rd parties are trustworthy and hopefully at least trying
their best in terms of not themselves being hacked by malicious actors, but I
think Apple also has a genuine legitimate concern here. A real goal for iOS is
that someone can browse through the App Store and install absolutely anything
they see and think looks interesting based purely on descriptions/reviews and
face a known, fairly minimal and easy to reason about threat profile. Of
course it hasn't always been perfect, but it's been a lot better at this then
the general free for all. If some of those apps make use of MDM powers outside
of normal MDM usage that breaks those expectations, that's not made up.

FWIW I personally think Apple should be required to allow other stores and
permanent device owner created master signing cert loading capability, even if
only via offering a more expensive "developer" model of phone with that
capability not fused off. But the security and privacy tradeoffs there are
worthy of consideration and efforts to find the best balances, and even in
those cases I'd still be fine with Apple having their own curated App Store
that remained as strict as they wished.

~~~
ghostly_s
I see, this all makes sense to me. This is definitely not the message Apple is
conveying in this statement however, if you ask me.

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ar-jan
I wonder if they're also removing the apps used to control women's lives in
Saudi Arabia.

~~~
scarface74
While the apps are atrocious. The apps from what I csn tell are just front
ends for websites and services being offered. They don’t do anything on the
phone itself that takes advantage of special permissions.

Of course they should remove them too.

~~~
adrianN
I don't support the way women are treated in SA, but I don't really see why
Apple should get to be the global moral police. Those applications are
presumably perfectly legal where they are used.

~~~
jasonlotito
> but I don't really see why Apple should get to be the global moral police.

Apple already takes a moral stance on certain things. This isn't a debate. If
they don't want to allow something on their App store, they will shut it down,
even if it's 100% legal. These are the slipper slopes people have talked about
for years. This is not new.

Apple has shown that if it doesn't want to support something, they won't. This
means it's perfectly reasonable to hold them to account for things that are
supported by their platform. This is why some platforms simply don't do any
policing, or very limited.

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benologist
Apple's long-standing policy of rolling out a new feature then criminalizing
whatever subsequently competes with them doesn't need defending. There's maybe
even too much defending - broken keyboards, bent iPads, anti-competitive
practices, and not enough honesty or ethics in that company.

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nailer
Isn't a child's phone a managed device? Using MDM for parental control seems
entirely appropriate.

~~~
wlesieutre
The issue is who controls the MDM profile. In the case of these apps it's the
app developers instead of the parents.

So by using it, you're giving some complete strangers access to snoop on
everything in your child's phone. Even if you trust the developer not to abuse
that, you're trusting them to keep their own systems secure _and_ to not hire
an employee who might abuse it. We know how that worked out for the NSA where
they had people using their surveillance programs to snoop on exes.

If you want to use MDM to manage your child's phone, the way to do that is
with a service where you manage the MDM yourself like a company would do with
their fleet of phones, not to hand the keys off to an untrusted third party.

~~~
nailer
> The issue is who controls the MDM profile. In the case of these apps it's
> the app developers instead of the parents.

Ah. That makes perfect sense and I'm changing my mind on this one. Apple did
the right thing.

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bschelsea
I think this highlights the conflict between owner and a user. For
Corporations with employees there is a clean distinctions. For kids it’s a lot
more difficult decision. Apple in its zeal to maintain the woke privacy
friendly image (everywhere except China) made calculated decision that risk of
these apps getting used in Intimate Partner Surveillance leading to negative
PR is more than parents being unable to protect their kids from drugs and
grooming. We will soon see how it plays out. My guess the the timer will turn
red as it does when recording screen to alert user of MDM.

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willio58
I can’t imagine growing up in a time like today where some parents think it’s
their right to know every single thing you do on your devices. It probably
would have stunted my growth as a person in many ways.

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denzil_correa
Link to Apple's Press Release : [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/the-
facts-about-paren...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/the-facts-about-
parental-control-apps/)

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yohann305
If Apple really cared about developers, they should create a new set of
features that allows developers to recreate the same functionality in their
apps without having to use MDM tech, instead of banning them without listening
to them...

~~~
arien
From the article:

> “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,” a spokesperson
> explained. “Several developers released updates to bring their apps in line
> with these policies. Those that didn’t were removed from the App Store.”

~~~
pier25
Realistically, 30 days may not be enough time for certain products.

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pier25
Everyone here is commenting about MDM being used in the enterprise, but what
about schools?

I'm in education and the iOS schools we deal with use different MDM solutions,
and certainly not Apple's MDM software.

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cozzyd
When Apple removes these apps, do they disappear from people who've already
purchased them and, if so, do they get a refund?

~~~
throw03172019
They stay on the device. But if the person gets a new device and restores the
phone I don’t think the removed apps come back though.

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gregoryexe
FTA: "The controversy follows comments last week by chief executive Tim Cook,
who said that Apple wanted to see customers spend less time on their devices."

Talk is cheap and sells well...

~~~
Isamu
Apple doesn't make money from you spending all day on your phone. They would
be fine if everybody would buy a phone, maybe a couple of apps, and set aside
until there was a need.

You are mistaking them for Facebook or any of the other engagement-driven, ad-
selling companies.

~~~
1sttimeposter
Apple most certainly makes money off of ads. It isn’t a major profit center
but according to the following article it is on track to rake in $2B by next
year. Also they make a nice cut of sales via app purchases an in-app
purchases. They. Definitely want you using your device as regularly as
possible to capitalize on that revenue opportunity. Their stance on privacy
and security is a marketing angle capitalizing on the fear currently out there
as a result of people awakening to how much of the web is monetized (I.e. with
ads).

[https://searchengineland.com/apple-search-ads-expected-to-
ge...](https://searchengineland.com/apple-search-ads-expected-to-
generate-2-billion-in-revenue-by-2020-306882)

~~~
Isamu
Search ads, for instance in the App Store.

Again, nobody spends all day searching the App store. Apple's business model
is not driven by your engagement. They make vastly more money when you make
discreet choices, like buying a device, purchasing a subscription, etc.

