Tea and the App Store
John Gruber (Mastodon, Hacker News):
I might be forgetting or unaware of previous similar situations, but I can’t recall anything like this before, where an app riddled with outrageous security/privacy vulnerabilities remains virally popular. A Hacker News thread from earlier today debates why the app is even still available on the App Store.
So is it Apple’s place to yank the app? It feels wrong to me that Apple should completely remove Tea from the App Store, but it’s also true that one of Apple’s fundamental pitches for the App Store — and the App Store’s exclusivity for app distribution in most of the world — is that iOS users can trust any and all apps in the App Store because they’re vetted by Apple. But here’s Tea, sitting at #3, providing a service that many woman want, and the entire thing is shockingly untrustworthy. (I fully expect more vulnerabilities to be found and exploited.)
[…]
I strongly suspect that while Google hasn’t removed Tea from the Play Store, that they’ve delisted it from discovery other than by searching for it by name or following a direct link to its listing. That both jibes with what I’m seeing on the Play Store top lists, and strikes me as a thoughtful balance between the responsibilities of an app store provider.
Apple’s guidelines:
Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem, and you should use care when handling personal data to ensure you’ve complied with privacy best practices, applicable laws, and the terms of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, not to mention customer expectations.
[…]
All apps must include a link to their privacy policy in the App Store Connect metadata field and within the app in an easily accessible manner.
[…]
Explain its data retention/deletion policies and describe how a user can revoke consent and/or request deletion of the user’s data.
We retain personal information we collect from You where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax, or accounting requirements). When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.
Tea:
Your data privacy is of the utmost importance to us. We are taking all necessary measures to strengthen our security posture and ensure that no further data is exposed.
[…]
This data was originally archived in compliance with law enforcement requirements related to cyber-bullying prevention. At this time, we have no evidence to suggest that photos can be linked to specific users within the app.
This last sentence turned out to be false.
Previously:
3 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Ah, but the last line did *not* turn out to be false! “At that time” they had “no evidence”!
Every angle is bad for Apple and the platform:
- Makes Apple complicit in steering users into another honeypot. Top Lists are more impactful than a one-time recommend.
- Flip side: Let's say Apple removed it from the Top Lists + discovery. How would Apple know its backend is secured? When would they allow it to be re-listed or re-trend?
- None of the (especially recently) dumb ways they've crippled their OSes in the name of security helped here. No Vista popup, no artificial API restriction, and no policy stops what happens to data a user willingly submits to a server.
- Another argument proving App Review is about enforcing Apple's fee, not end-user safety.
But "safety" arguments eventually become about politics or business. Apple had no problem killing Parler for political reasons and was that any more of a shoddy implementation than Tea? Apple had no problem killing VPN apps for China and Russia, and did that make users in those regions "safer"? They'll use any justification they want, but "safety" is consistently trumped by "agrees with our politics" or "agrees with our shareholders".
All this discussion becomes moot if we could Freely Install Apps instead of Sideloading them through the App Store. It's very import devs reverse Apple's 1984 Sideload terminology: I want to Freely install any app, not be forced to Sideload apps through a single vendor in the App Store. If we could Freely Install apps, like we actually owned the device, then no one would care as much what Apple does or doesn't do about this.
@Hammer exactly.
The only reason Apple is this position in the first place is because they chose to be here. Is it Apple's responsibility to evaluate the servers and security policies of every app on the store? If they are going to continue to claim that the App Store is the only safe place in the world to get software, then the answer has to be yes. But of course that's ridiculous.
Even taking their argument at face value, it's an increasingly archaic and ineffective approach. It has been shown time and time and time again, perhaps most notably by Epic, that Apple can't do anything about content that is loaded into an app after it's been "evaluated" and "approved."
It's also been shown time and time and time again that the "evaluation" focuses almost entirely on protecting Apple's business interests.
