Apple didn’t take a position on Facebook’s creation of a paid “research” program to extract data from users. In response, Apple revoked Facebook’s enterprise developer certificate, saying distributing a data-collecting app to consumers “is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple.” Cheddar reporter Alex Heath called it “an aggressive flex on Apple’s part.”īut responses such as that one give Apple too much credit, in this case and in general. It wouldn’t make sense to release that to the public, so an organization creates an “enterprise” certificate in order to distribute the app within its walls.įacebook ran afoul of Apple because it used this system to distribute its data-collection app to consumers outside the company, which isn’t allowed. For example, a company might create a bespoke app for inventory tracking. Another allows an organization to make apps for internal use. The most common one is used to list an app on the Apple App Store. To distribute apps on the iPhone, creators pay an annual fee to Apple, which issues a “certificate” that allows a developer to distribute the apps they create. In fact, failing to take action while grandstanding about the urgency of doing so might make it even worse. Until it does, it’s time to stop letting Apple off the hook as a more moral company than Google or Facebook. If Apple really cared about personal data, the company could take any number of actions to keep privacy violators off its platforms and away from its customers. But to lean on policy as a prerequisite for action is to sidestep the moral quandary. Government regulation of the kind Cook called for in his Brussels speech is one way to improve personal-data privacy, and probably a necessary one. It gives Apple moral cover while doing little to change the data economy the company claims to oppose. That might look like a severe punishment that will send a strong message to Facebook, and to other companies. That wasn’t enough for Apple, which canceled Facebook’s ability to distribute custom iPhone apps for internal use by Facebook employees. Facebook uses this information partly to improve its data profiles for advertisement, but also as a business-intelligence tool to help paint a picture of competitor behavior.Īfter the story broke, Facebook said it would shut down the iOS version of the program. Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Facebook had been paying people, including teens 13 to 17 years old, to install a “research” app that extracted huge volumes of personal data from their iPhones-direct messages, photos, emails, and more. The speech is worth revisiting in light of an emerging fight between Apple and Facebook. data-privacy law focused on minimizing data collection, securing that data, and informing users about its nature and use. “And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them.” Cook called for a comprehensive U.S. “But we also recognize that not everyone sees things as we do.” Cook was making an impassioned plea to end the technology industry’s collection and sale of user data. “We at Apple believe that privacy is a fundamental human right,” Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said in a privacy-conference keynote last year in Brussels.
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