Apple yoinks enterprise certs from Facebook, Google, killing internal apps, to show its power

[The AchieVer]

Apple yoinks enterprise certs from Facebook, Google, killing internal apps, to show its power

You have been warned... Tech giants abuse dev program, iPhone maker eventually undoes ban

 

 

Analysis After briefly punishing Facebook and Google for violating the rules of its enterprise developer program, Apple has relented. Cupertino is in the process of restoring the digital certificates used by Facebook and Google to sign and distribute in-house iOS apps internally to employees, after revoking them within the past 24 hours.

The iPhone maker invalidated Facebook's enterprise app certificate earlier this week after the ad biz admitted using using Apple's enterprise program to bypass the consumer app approval process of its public App Store, and distribute its data-harvesting Facebook Research app directly to teens and adults. The enterprise program allows companies to digitally sign their own custom iOS and macOS apps, and hand them to employees for internal use and development.

 

Had Facebook chosen to submit its "research" app for distribution to netizens through the iOS App Store, it's likely Apple's reviewers would have rejected it for violating privacy guidelines. Apple previously asked Facebook to remove its data collecting Onavo VPN app from the iOS App Store. Facebook Research is said to be essentially the same code under a different name. It logs pretty much everything you do online, passing it back to the antisocial media giant to analyze and mine, and rewards its surveillance guinea pigs $20 in vouchers a month for giving up their privacy. Facebook signed it using its enterprise cert to allow it to be installed on users' handhelds.

Shortly after excommunicating Facebook's internal iOS apps, by canceling the certificate, Apple did the same to Google, which confessed and apologized for using its iOS enterprise certificate to distribute its own data-snarfing app called Screenwise Meter.

The brief ban is said to have been disruptive for both companies, disabling internal apps used by employees and preventing builds of internal apps that all relied on the now-revoked signing certificates.

Facebook now says all's well. "We have had our Enterprise Certification, which enables our internal employee applications, restored," a company spokesperson said in an email to The Register. "We are in the process of getting our internal apps up and running. To be clear, this didn’t have an impact on our consumer-facing services."

Apple is said to be in the process of doing the same for Google.

The Register asked Google for comment but we've not heard back.

 

While Apple's action can be appreciated from a privacy and safety perspective, it also underscores the exceptional power the company holds over its hardware and software ecosystem.

Developers of iOS apps have no way to distribute unvetted apps apart from releasing app code as open source so other iOS developers can build and install such projects on their own gear. And Apple has made clear, enterprise distribution has limits.

Outside of Apple's TestFlight service for limited distribution of beta code, the one public distribution option available to iOS developers, the iOS App Store, requires Apple approval, which isn't necessarily reasonable.

 

The Android ecosystem is different. Users of Android devices can side-load apps from outside the Google Play Store or other Android like the Amazon App Store or GetJar. That presents more danger from malicious code but it also treats mobile users like adults capable of making their own decisions.

What's missing is a way to enforce clear communication about what apps actually do, like nutrition labels on food. Without that, it's difficult to make an informed choice about which apps to install on either platform.

 

 

Source

[steven36]

They don't want  to piss Google off too much  after all  Google pays them   way more  to use there search API  than Itunes makes for them. I'm sure Google would be just fine  without them what's Apple going use to replace it? No one else  will pay them  that much for a dying smartphone  maker and a semi dead PC platform .. Tim Cook has been riding dead Steve Jobs coat tail too long and hes been nothing but a cancer too Apple.  Before  he took over they actuality were a great company there just washed up has beens  now. Tim Cook is just a drama mama . They never had a bit of power over me they discounted everything on Windows they do years ago but ITunes witch you couldn't pay me to install, I never have ..  .

 

Apple don't even have as much as Google and Microsoft does going for them anymore,  they don't even make anything that reaches out to most of the word nothing they make is cross platform but itunes ..Apple needs Big Tech to even stay in there little nich  .What it it really boils down to there just powerless  .Because just kicking big tech off that platform just would make them lose more customers and they really don't have that many as it is, compered to there competition .

 

Hes talks about privacy in the USA while at the same time he is helping China with surveillance ,Fake and 2 faced..His phones being too expensive is why he had to cut back production  because people don't want  to spend that much when they can get another vendor's phone cheaper . If they remove Big Tech apps his customers  use it will be even less reason to buy them.   LOL sooner or latter some dirt going to come out on Apple for playing the privacy card   in the post Snowden era, that will contradict everything they said.  just like it did on the rest of them . Apple are trying  to act like Google and say Do No Evil ..All that done  for Google get them laughed at and exposed.