Apple pulls privacy app from its store

@ 2012/07/23
Bitdefender's 'Clueful' Privacy App has proved jolly useful as fanboys started to discover what data about themselves was being leaked to companies.

The idea of the app was to let iOS users get a grip on what the apps installed on their mobile devices may be doing by telling owners which applications may be accessing more information than they need.

The app identified potentially "misbehaving" apps and gave users an inside look at all the information app developers can gather.

Obviously something that useful should be encouraged, after all Apple does not want people in its Walled Garden of Delights losing all their data to bad apps.

Well actually it does. According to SecurityWeek, Cupertino pulled the App from the App Store this week after months of successful usage.

Bitdefender is working with Apple to fix "the problems" but said that Jobs' Mob made it sign an NDA about the matter. The company can break the NDA and will be sued and lose any chance of appearing in the Apple store in the future.

It is incredibly likely that other app developers have complained about the product which has fingered their products as data thieves. It is also possible that Apple itself does not want to scare anyone from buying apps by being informed.

Bitdefender has shared some data that they gathered based on Clueful's analysis of more than 65,000 popular iOS apps.

Apparently 42.5 percent of apps do not encrypt users' personal data, even when accessed via public Wi-Fi and another 41.4 percent of apps were shown to track a user's location when they don't know.

Almost one in five of the apps can access a user's entire Address Book, with some even sending user information to the cloud without notification.

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