Parental Controls on iOS
Recently Apple removed parental control apps from the App Store. This caused media such as The New York Times to publish articles accusing that they did so to eliminate competition in that field.
We remind you that Apple has native parental control features in its system iOS We can control the usage time that We make the iPhone, apps a whole bunch of options with which to curb our mobile phone consumption or the use of the mobile phone by the youngest members of the family.
Apple has found out about this and to deny that they were doing it to remove competition, it has issued a statement. In it, he talks about the reason for removing these apps.
Why Apple removed parental control apps to take care of our privacy and security:
Here we show you some excerpts from the official statement that Apple published on April 28 (translated with the Google Translate tool) .
We recently removed several parental control apps from the App Store, and we did it for one simple reason: they put users' privacy and security at risk. It is important to understand why and how this happened.
Over the past year, we have noticed that several of these parental control apps use 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 usage, email accounts, camera permissions, and browsing history.We began exploring this use of MDM by non-enterprise developers in early 2017 and updated our guidelines based on that work in mid-2017.
MDM has legitimate uses. Sometimes companies will install MDM on enterprise devices to maintain better control over proprietary hardware and data. But it's incredibly risky, and a clear violation of App Store policies, for a consumer-focused private app business to install MDM control on a customer's device. Beyond the control the app can exert over the user's device, research has shown that hackers can use MDM profiles to gain access for malicious purposes.
Removed apps were given the opportunity to bring them up to App Store standards:
Both tools were given a period of 30 days to update and adapt the apps to the standards of the App StoreMany other apps in the same category did and stopped using this technology. Those that didn't have been removed from the app store.
And in this way Apple looks after our privacy and security.
